[HN Gopher] No I don't want to turn on Windows Backup with One D...
___________________________________________________________________
No I don't want to turn on Windows Backup with One Drive
Author : firefoxd
Score : 470 points
Date : 2025-10-12 15:42 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (idiallo.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (idiallo.com)
| vee-kay wrote:
| Instead of Windows Backup (which relies on M$ OneDrive), you can
| enable (in Control panel settings) and use Windows File History.
|
| File History is a backup feature in Windows that automatically
| saves copies of your files from specific folders, like Documents
| and Pictures, to an external drive or network location. It allows
| you to restore previous versions of your files if they are lost
| or damaged.
|
| To enable File History in Windows, connect an external drive or
| network location, then go to Settings > Update & Security >
| Backup, and select "Add a drive" to choose your backup location.
| Finally, turn on File History to start backing up your files
| automatically.
| hedora wrote:
| I think you're missing the point. There are plenty of better
| backup solutions for windows, and the vast majority of them are
| not Microsoft products.
| vee-kay wrote:
| I am pointing out that existing Windows feature (File
| History) exists as alternative to Windows Backup (which
| requires Microsoft OneDrive, which is free only upto 5GB of
| cloud storage).
|
| You are the one missing the point by suggesting off-the-shelf
| backup solutions.
|
| For corporate users, getting off-the-self solution as
| alternatives (even if it's open-source) software may not be
| easy (corporates typically have strict controls on what
| software they allow for users, and usually they contractually
| need to reveal to customers if they are using open-source
| software), but they can use File History for free, by setting
| it to back it up to a network path/drive if their IT admins
| permit.
| add-sub-mul-div wrote:
| That's cool, I didn't know about this, I'll see if it might be
| simpler than something I hooked up with a bash script.
| anonymars wrote:
| wbadmin is the GOAT. Multi version snapshots of the drives,
| which you can easily mount as they are vhdx
|
| Sadly some of the potential is gimped (point in time restore
| of individual files) but in a pinch you can grab an eval copy
| of Server and run it in Hyper-V, attach the backup drive to
| that, and do it that way
| proactivesvcs wrote:
| Ironically File History silently ignores all the contents of
| any onedrive folders when backing up.
| a022311 wrote:
| I've used this for a few months and it ended up taking too much
| space and was quite fragile in my experience.
|
| Even with this and OneDrive enabled, I managed to lose years of
| family photos when trying to free up space thinking "oh I've
| got this backed up" and then thinking the same when freeing up
| space when deleting my backup. I wish Windows could be less
| confusing...
| layer8 wrote:
| Windows File History doesn't eliminate the need for an actual
| backup of important files, but it's a convenient feature to
| be able to quickly inspect or restore random files you
| changed or deleted recently-ish (roughly a year for me). It's
| best to point it to a separate drive/partition and configure
| it to fill that one up and have it delete the oldest files
| whenever it needs more free space.
| babas wrote:
| Windows enshittification has come a long way unfortunately. You
| still have some options to remove crap. I have had very good luck
| with o&o ShutUp10++
|
| https://www.oo-software.com/en/shutup10
| allears wrote:
| Also, if you want to stay on 10, 0patch is a good option.
|
| Changing the win11 UI to something more usable with
| StartAllBack is also recommended. $5 one-time fee.
| rolph wrote:
| keep paying again, to have a usable device is not a solution,
| its more like the MS endgame
| hedora wrote:
| This stuff is increasingly normalized across platforms.
|
| I'd say "vote with your wallet", but when all the tech platforms
| are doing it, there's not much choice. PCs / laptops are probably
| the last hold out: Just switch to Linux (but be careful which
| distro you pick) or MacOS (for now).
|
| The political pendulum is going to swing far left in the US given
| the disasters that are playing out in DC. Hopefully this sort of
| crap will be banned when that happens.
| j1elo wrote:
| IMHO Linux Mint keeps being the strongest option to recommend
| when the intention is a clean transition with the least amount
| of fiddling. It just works, it is reliable, and it doesn't play
| games with changes of basic technologies that can only cause
| confusion (e.g. none of the Ubuntu shenanigans like their
| confusing desktop or their non-Debian packaging)
| shmerl wrote:
| I wouldn't recommend Mint. Better use something with recent
| KDE Plasma and recent kernel and Mesa for best Wayland
| experience.
|
| Especially speaking of playing games, I periodically see
| newcomer Linux gamers hitting problems due to Mint being
| outdated and not having good Wayland support. Especially for
| any kind of recent hardware.
| nokeya wrote:
| Any examples of "something with recent kde"? I have Ubuntu
| currently, wanted to switch to the Mint, now want to hear
| more opinions
| shmerl wrote:
| I'd say any rolling distro. Try Debian testing or
| unstable if you prefer Debian distros family (choose KDE
| during installation). Or try Arch.
|
| KDE also started making its own Arch based distro now:
| https://kde.org/linux/
|
| But it's one of those immutable flavors. I prefer
| something more flexible.
| Alupis wrote:
| Fedora
| jpmattia wrote:
| How do you deal with the short lifespan until EOL? I've
| been using Rocky (and CentOS before that) simply to avoid
| dealing with EOL so often.
| Alupis wrote:
| Fedora makes major upgrades pretty easy - you can even do
| it via the GUI Software Center, then reboot.
|
| Personally I'm using Kinoite[1], an "immutable" version
| of Fedora that has an immutable base image, which makes
| it nearly impossible to break things during updates (even
| major upgrades).
|
| [1] - https://fedoraproject.org/atomic-desktops/kinoite/
| queenkjuul wrote:
| I use mint's cinnamon UI on Ubuntu. It's by far my
| favorite desktop, but yeah Mint's main packages are too
| far out of date usually.
| sebtron wrote:
| For me it's the exact opposite, I had problems with Steam
| games on Wayland and I switched back to X11.
| shmerl wrote:
| You probably used Nvidia and some outdated distro with a
| bad DE on top. Not something you should be using. Using
| X11 is DOA anyway, so you can figure out what was wrong
| in your case and use better options.
| sebtron wrote:
| No, AMD. I had issues on the latest Debian, released this
| summer, with KDE. X11 works perfectly fine. I would be
| happy with wayland too, if it worked. And in fact I use
| it on my other device.
| shmerl wrote:
| What kind of issues though with what GPU? I'm using
| Debian testing, it all works fine with AMD and KDE Plasma
| Wayland session.
|
| With AMD, always make sure to use latest kernel, Mesa and
| amdgpu firmware.
| sebtron wrote:
| The Steam main window did not open, although Steam itself
| did load in the background. I could work around this by
| disabling smooth scrolling on web view and some other
| GPU-related option (I forgot exactly).
|
| But then there was a strange glitch on every single game
| (both native and Proton-based). Periodically (e.g. every
| ~10 seconds on some 3D games, on every screen reload on
| some other) the screen turned black for about 2 seconds.
|
| Then I remembered that I had some issue when I first
| installed Debian 12 two years, though I forgot which
| issues exactly, and that I solved them by switching from
| Wayland to X11.
| shmerl wrote:
| What DE? And that's with all the latest components as
| above? I wouldn't use Debian stable for gaming purposes,
| since it falls behind very quickly. Debian testing /
| unstable is a better idea, and even then you'd want to
| install latest amdgpu firmware manually potentially.
| sebtron wrote:
| KDE, not sure what version the kernel and the drivers
| are, whatever Debian stable has. I think kernel is 6.12.
|
| I'll try updating the firmware and drivers manually if I
| have more issues in the future, thanks.
| shmerl wrote:
| Yeah, for sure always have latest kernel, Mesa and
| firmware if you are having any gaming issues. 6.12 is
| already old by now.
| dismalaf wrote:
| Linux Mint is terrible. Horribly outdated software, how are
| they still on X11? Both their DEs are forks which introduces
| problems...
|
| Like, in regular Gnome/KDE land, you have Wayland which is a
| huge improvement over X11, HDR works, fractional scaling
| works... None of that works on Mint.
| shmerl wrote:
| Not sure why you are downvoted, what you said is true. Mint
| has some WIP to support Wayland in Cinnamon, but it's way
| behind other DEs and I wouldn't recommend using it.
| dare944 wrote:
| Voted down because the "Linux Mint is terrible" statement
| clearly isn't true.
| shmerl wrote:
| Wong wording may be, but the point of the post is
| correct. Mint just lags behind with Wayland support and
| in being up to date for handling recent hardware
| especially.
|
| The former is Mint's specific problem, while the latter
| is a general problem of all long period release distros
| that don't take care of updating Linux kernel, Mesa and
| etc. to actual recent releases.
| dismalaf wrote:
| When Mint always comes up as a distro for newbies coming
| from Windows, then lacks all the features of a modern
| system, yes, it's terrible.
| barbs wrote:
| Agreed. For people coming from Windows Linux Mint is the one
| I recommend. Simple, stable, minimal hassle.
| intalentive wrote:
| I like Mint. I just wanted something simple that looks like
| Win7 I can use for work, email, browsing, and it delivers.
| creato wrote:
| MacOS is just as aggressive about turning on icloud as windows
| is with it's crap.
| acomjean wrote:
| I'll concur with Apple being way more aggressive about this
| as well. icloud and if you try to use music on you iPhone
| with your collection of music Apple Music is always being
| pitched. Though the windows default start menu is something
| to behold these days (or widget panel..). I deleted Apple
| Maps from my phone because I never used it, but nothing would
| free up the 10 gigs of data it was storing.... Sigh.
|
| Linux is good enough to be a daily driver for most things
| these days.
| xdfgh1112 wrote:
| New phone came with no standalone music player only YouTube
| Music. But fair play to them you can click "local files
| only" at first launch and it keeps out of your way.
| GeekyBear wrote:
| When Apple forces users to use an online account to access
| their local Mac, and disables their OS unless they turn on
| iCloud on their Mac -- then you can claim equivalence between
| them.
| bigyabai wrote:
| I can claim equivalence between them whenever I want. If
| both OSes adopt and enforce my biggest pet peeves, then no
| amount of eye candy or freebie features will fix my
| workflow.
|
| Gatekeeping and second opinions don't really move the
| needle on where I stand with either company.
| handsclean wrote:
| Showing up in a thread you haven't even participated in
| and saying "I've already made my choice, quit giving me
| second opinions" is comically self-centered.
| creato wrote:
| I literally just got my first Mac computer a few months
| ago. I tried to set it up as a local account with no online
| account. I could not.
|
| Maybe it is possible and I just missed it. But either they
| don't allow it, or they have enough dark pattern bullshit
| to trick me, either way, it's the same as windows to me.
| pndy wrote:
| I'm pretty sure there was some keyboard shortcut to skip
| apple id login/creation during initial setup - not sure
| if that's still possible nowadays but I did used it once
| on my mbp few years ago
| ziml77 wrote:
| All you have to do is choose Set Up Later when presented
| with the screen for logging in with an Apple account.
| vunderba wrote:
| Unless the way VMs install a distro is somehow
| fundamentally different from a new computer, then it's
| literally two clicks when installing Sonoma to use a
| local account when prompted (Setup Later and then click
| Skip). I just tested this.
| ajkjk wrote:
| the fact that you have to have an apple account to do all
| kinds of basic developer tasks (installing Xcode / Xcode
| command line tools, which are needed for lots of stuff last
| time I checked (a few years ago?)) is evidence that they
| suck also. But not nearly as bad as Microsoft who are
| actively scum from the moment you first turn the computer
| on.
| itopaloglu83 wrote:
| I'm sorry but you're mistaken. It's literally a normal skip
| button when first setting up the machine.
|
| https://youtu.be/rE-hFyANr0Y
|
| And unlike Windows it doesn't turn itself on randomly or
| install additional apps like OneDrive, Teams, and Skype etc.
| with every OS update.
| marzullo wrote:
| Yep, just setup a new MacBook Air and did not have to link
| an Apple account during setup.
| malfist wrote:
| It's almost like monopolies aren't good for the consumer. We
| need some real power for enforcing the Sherman act. Too many
| companies have been able to buy all their competitors
| jofla_net wrote:
| Yeah but that sweet sweet ABI, we just gotta have that stable
| ABI, bum ba dum.
|
| Remember that ABI when you're pulling out your hair over
| whatever MS's latest snafu is. The PC isn't about personal
| computing, no ,no, its about desperation. Its about using the
| fulcrum of ABI stability to see how much someone can accept
| wedged down their throat, because yeah, well, don't wanna
| loose that ABI.
|
| Remember that ABI, 'next time 'Error: Something Happened.'
| brendoelfrendo wrote:
| Unfortunately, anti-trust doctrine in the US has gone from
| "too little competition in a market is inherently bad" to
| "any % of market share is OK as long as it doesn't result in
| consumer prices getting too high too fast." We've really lost
| the plot of why anti-trust regulation was passed in the first
| place.
| parineum wrote:
| > We've really lost the plot of why anti-trust regulation
| was passed in the first place.
|
| I don't personally have any knowledge of the answer to this
| question but, hundreds of people had to vote for it and
| they rarely all have the same things in mind when they do.
|
| It's better to focus on what legislation does and says
| rather than what it was meant to do.
| kibwen wrote:
| _> or MacOS (for now)_
|
| Reminder that Apple's revenue from ads is in the billions and
| climbing at an accelerating pace. The enshittification comes
| for all. They don't need to be good, they just need to be
| better than Microsoft.
| amelius wrote:
| My Android tablet keeps bugging me about updates and what not.
| Wish I could install my preferred flavor of Linux on it, but it
| seems infeasible at this moment.
| bigyabai wrote:
| macOS is absolutely awful about iCloud nag. If you try and use
| a Mac without an iCloud account, you'll get neverending popups
| and notifications begging you to go online. It's nearly as bad
| as Windows.
|
| Neither GNOME nor KDE get anywhere near as bad. It's really
| _only_ these commercial "holier than thou" operating systems
| that think they know best.
| nogridbag wrote:
| I haven't experienced this but I see you're the second
| comment pointing that out. I've been using macbooks for work
| for a long time and never once used iCloud nor do I remember
| seeing a confusing prompt. But I also rarely upgrade my
| machine.
|
| With Windows, a regular seemingly normal update appeared
| almost as if I was upgrading from Windows 10 to Windows 11
| and it prompted me to do the backup to OneDrive. I accepted
| it because I was worried the update to Windows 11 would get
| screwed up. After the update completed it was just a normal
| update after all and there was no need for me to accept that
| onedrive backup!
| bigyabai wrote:
| iCloud nags appear in the Settings app and Notifications
| menu. When you are signed out, Apple will assault you with
| notifications (that you must disabled with a script) until
| you log in:
| https://discussions.apple.com/thread/250786208?sortBy=rank
|
| I've got my fair share of horror-stories with both OSes, I
| switched between dailying Mojave and Windows 10 for a big
| portion of my life. Nothing will ever top updating to
| Catalina, booting up Ableton Live and seeing all my paid
| plugins go from "working fine" to "completely unsupported"
| in the span of an update.
| pndy wrote:
| During pandemic I started playing with smart home stuff and
| since I'm already within apple playgrounds I've got homepod
| mini since they stripped ipads from hub feature. After
| configuring the speaker I had apple music ad for about 3
| months at the top of settings where ios software update
| notifications appears.
| liquid_thyme wrote:
| Its everywhere. You get nagged constantly for Apple music on
| your iphone too. My dystopian prediction is that in the near
| future, corporations will just garnish your wages so they
| don't have to do this.
| shmerl wrote:
| Agreed about switching to Linux. I don't agree on macOS though.
| Apple is nasty in its own way and has a ton of anti-user
| patterns no one should be dealing with. If you want to decide
| for yourself and not things being decided for you because _" we
| know better than you what you really need"_, just use Linux.
| lambdaone wrote:
| Apple had a go at doing this with iCloud, but clearly there was
| enough consumer pushback (a friend lost all their files after
| cancelling iCloud, thinking it was a backup service, not
| realising it deleted the original copies on their machine) that
| they stopped the enshittification there.
| LogicFailsMe wrote:
| Don't want OneDrive. Don't want co-pilot. And I say that as
| someone who enjoys vibe coding because while the former two are
| push, the latter is pull. Pull is the remedy to enshittification.
| But good luck explaining that to someone whose job depends on
| that not being the case.
| quectophoton wrote:
| Surprisingly, something I still haven't seen anywhere is having a
| "choice" with three buttons like:
|
| - "Yes" -> Consent.
|
| - "No" -> Popup asks you again some time later.
|
| - "Don't ask again" -> Meaning "Yes, and don't ask again".
| bradrn wrote:
| Don't give them ideas!!
| hedora wrote:
| I really want to see a tweak to the California and EU privacy
| rules that requires opting in to data collection / sharing to
| be at least as hard as opting out.
|
| For the first 5 years, the processes would be swapped, and set
| in stone. So, you'd need to call a number, sit on hold and be
| disconnected a few times to get a mailing address. Then you'd
| buy some stamps and an envelope if you want to submit a "Please
| sell my personal information" form. Grocery stores would charge
| you more if you used a loyalty card, and so on.
|
| Of course, a better approach would make the collection, sale,
| querying, possession of, and engaging in transactions involving
| consumer marketing databases illegal. (All those protections
| are needed since Google redefined "sell personal information"
| to not include any of their revenue streams.)
| ourmandave wrote:
| I _hate_ the "Not now..." b.s.
|
| They need a "F*ck off forever" option.
| kwanbix wrote:
| Win 10 IoT guys. Or Win 11 IoT. Not more problems.
| subscribed wrote:
| Yeah, I'm bracing myself for this. I'll get myself PS4 licence
| for this and hope for the best.
| olyjohn wrote:
| It's not a legit licensed copy for you. Sorry. You might as
| well just pirate it.
| 1718627440 wrote:
| Depends, there were court orders that claimed it were.
| kotaKat wrote:
| Can we crowdfund someone going to the Microsoft campuses,
| heckling every employee nonstop on the grounds, and when security
| comes up, just tell them "maybe later"?
| rolph wrote:
| someone already tried something similar with politics, but it
| didmt work out very well.
| DaveZale wrote:
| see what Neil Young has been saying about getting big
| corporations out of our lives. They skillfully buy out
| potential competitors and kill them to keep their monopolies.
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| What he has to say would have been a lot more believable
| before he sold half his back catalog to a hedge fund. Queue
| the McDonalds commericial that includes "keep me searching
| for an arch of gold"...
| add-sub-mul-div wrote:
| In Ubuntu I turn off motd ads, in Windows I turn off this stuff,
| it doesn't come back, I only remember it exists when I see the
| outrage journalism headlines. I don't see why more people don't
| just take the steps to remove annoyances.
| rolph wrote:
| the problem is MS keeps taking steps to resurrect those
| annoyances.
| bearjaws wrote:
| You can plug your ears and close your eyes, but Microsoft is
| becoming increasingly adversarial to their customers.
|
| It's clear they want to remove local accounts and tie
| everything to O365.
|
| My mom (68 yo) recently got a Windows update that then prompted
| her to backup her stuff. I had disabled all this and used Win11
| debloat previously. OneDrive only had 5gb of storage and
| prompted her to upgrade.
|
| She thought she got hacked because it was asking for money.
| Then when I went to turn it off it warned me that I _might_
| suffer data loss disabling one drive. Which is a story that we
| have seen play out _many_ times.
|
| Sure enough I backed everything up to an external drive, and
| when I disabled OneDrive the files were totally gone.
|
| https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/answers/questions/5309251/...
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/techsupport/comments/1ef8pgr/one_dr...
|
| https://www.elevenforum.com/t/i-tried-to-disable-onedrive-lo...
|
| So sure, _you_ can get around it, but there are going to be
| hundreds of millions of other people who won 't.
| thescriptkiddie wrote:
| i have uninstalled onedrive at least 6 times on one computer. i
| never intentionally installed it
| II2II wrote:
| I don't know if it is still true, but I noticed a difference in
| the behaviour of Home and Professional editions a number of
| years back. Home was definitely more agressive. Then there was
| a recent reinstall of Windows. The One Drive backup popup came
| up, but didn't give me an option to say no. It only allowed me
| to delay the decision by a week or a month.
| olyjohn wrote:
| Oh please. The Ubuntu thing isnt even anywhere close. Also you
| know that there is more than one Linux distro, so nice try
| justifying it.
| badsectoracula wrote:
| May i suggest some solutions? :-P
|
| -> https://endof10.org/ (it has a map with people who can help
| install Linux)
|
| -> https://www.opensuse.org/ (what i'm using on my PCs, works
| fine for the most part[0])
|
| -> https://www.linuxmint.com/ (people seem to like this)
|
| -> https://bazzite.gg/ (seems to be popular with gamers)
|
| -> https://www.debian.org/ (almost everything is based on this
| :-P)
|
| [0] for the most part because nothing - not even macOS where
| Apple controls the entire stack from CPU up to the OS - is
| without problems. Though i'm doing weird stuff with my PC - on my
| laptop i just threw it in ~3 years ago and it has been working
| without issues since then
| ramon156 wrote:
| May I suggest you give fedora a go? It still feels like the
| most mature distro out there, but I can be biased
| subscribed wrote:
| I used both Fedora and Ubuntu for years and couldn't point to
| the _better_ distribution.
|
| Maybe one thing I had with Fedora: I had to trail one major
| distribution behind, because going for the most recent
| releases always ended up hurting me.
|
| But that's just for work. I don't think I can move my gaming
| to Linux yet
| Alupis wrote:
| I've been using the latest Fedora full-time for over two
| years without issue, and have been doing nearly all my
| gaming on it as well. The only gaming that doesn't work are
| games that deliberately use anti-cheat that doesn't support
| anything but Windows (typically the games run great in
| single player or offline, but multiplayer refuses to work).
| Of my Steam catalog, over 90% just works, and a large
| amount of that now has native Linux support thanks to the
| Steam Deck.
|
| What particular issues were you experiencing?
|
| As a counter anecdote, on my Windows installation I
| routinely run into "WTF" moments, such as BitLocker
| randomly deciding I need to enter recovery codes, the
| constant nagware that is OneDrive and friends, plus when I
| search for the same binary exe I've launched a dozen times
| Windows still displays "web results" first - fooling me
| just about every time.
| crote wrote:
| Interestingly, I had the opposite experience.
|
| With Ubuntu I kept running into bugs which had already been
| fixed upstream, or which were caused either by Debian's or
| Ubuntu's patches. And even filing regular bug reports was
| basically impossible: the Ubuntu packagers will almost
| certainly ignore it, the Debian packagers aren't interested
| in bugs happening in mutated versions of outdated packages
| in their unstable repo, and the upstream maintainers aren't
| interested in bug reports for weirdly-patched old releases.
|
| After several attempts at getting bugs fixed (sometimes
| even sending complete patches) and getting no response for
| _years_ I gave up on Ubuntu and switched to Fedora. Their
| policy is to ship the freshest upstream releases possible,
| with as few patches as possible. This means I can just
| directly file my bug reports at the upstream vendor, and a
| fix will usually land on my system fairly quickly.
|
| I do notice that I am slowly using more and more Flatpak
| desktop apps: why bother with the middleman when you can
| trivially get the latest release directly from the upstream
| vendor?
| badsectoracula wrote:
| TBH if i decide to change OS again, i'll probably go with
| Gentoo because AFAIK it provides means to have custom patches
| for packages and i'd like to do things like, e.g., add some
| stuff in the file dialog for Gtk3. Though i'm not sure this
| is something most people would care about, so i didn't
| mention it (also i only have a vague idea that this is
| possible, i haven't actually tried it in practice).
| Jach wrote:
| I've been using Gentoo as my primary OS since 2007, along
| with gnome2 (now mate) as the desktop environment with the
| ancient compiz for fancy effects like wobbling windows and
| a desktop cube. Updates come pretty quickly. It's so nice
| having rolling releases, dist upgrades for other distros
| make me nervous and I've lost time to them -- and
| occasionally other software that certain distros decided to
| throw you into a curses terminal UI for configuration (or
| just mysteriously break and fail to install the package if
| you were using the desktop GUI). The custom patches thing
| is really nice and fairly straightforward. When you install
| a package its tarball gets saved in /var/cache/distfiles/
| so you can just extract your package with the right version
| to a temp dir to work on. If you want to patch the package
| foo/bar you create a diff file
| /etc/portage/patches/foo/bar/patch-name (git format-patch
| can help, you just take the diff --git parts) and it gets
| auto-applied next time you build the package (or if it
| can't apply the diff, fails and tells you). I don't use
| this as often as I could, I only have a few patches at the
| moment (https://github.com/Jach/patches -- there's been a
| couple minor updates I should push), but it's pretty
| convenient to fix minor annoyances, take tiny fixes from
| upstream until they're fully released, or add custom
| features/text where you want.
|
| With overlays to get packages outside of the core distro
| tree, a lot of software is just available, and even when
| it's not, you usually have the build tools or can easily
| install them so building whatever else from source isn't an
| obstacle. (I do sometimes have to use debian/ubuntu/mint
| (mint is on my travel laptop that I only use when
| traveling) and it still gets me sometimes having to make
| sure build-essential and various -dev packages are
| installed to do anything.) One downside is that your glibc
| will likely be newer than a lot of other systems out there,
| so that creates obstacles to shipping binaries around. You
| can also create your own packages in an overlay fairly
| easily as well, or keep some old ones around that have lost
| their maintainers and get removed from the tree.
|
| There's also a somewhat annoying 'license' system (adding
| license names you accept to a configuration file) but with
| it the tooling can automatically fetch certain things for
| downloading (e.g. nvidia driver blobs) that some companies
| want people to get manually so they can harvest your
| data/force you to accept some EULA. I'm now remembering
| that 16 or 17 years ago, the last time I tried Fedora, I
| was testing it out by plugging in a flash drive (yay it
| auto mounted) but it failed to play an MP3 file and
| suggested I pay someone money to install codecs. It's left
| a sour impression on Fedora ever since, not to mention my
| lingering question why anyone would want a Red Hat
| derivative outside of a locked down office (and even then
| at my old BigCo job we devs got to use Ubuntu).
|
| For casual use I still think Mint is probably the best
| distro at the moment. I tend to recommend the mate desktop
| environment since it's what I like and am used to but it's
| a poor distro if you can't easily install any DE of choice
| on it.
| brushfoot wrote:
| My main reasons for using Windows right now are:
|
| - Davinci Resolve
|
| - Adobe suite
|
| - AutoHotkey scripts, lots of them
|
| - Microsoft Office, mainly PowerPoint, Excel and Word for
| creating and interacting with other companies' docs.
| Libre/OpenOffice mangled them/were missing features I depend on
|
| - Issues with my laptop's Nvidia card (screen tearing etc.)
| last time I tried to switch, and rabbit holes that I don't have
| time for anymore (solopreneur)
|
| That said, I would love to switch back. I loved rofi [0] last
| time, for example.
|
| Can anyone speak to the above? What's the status of running
| Windows apps like Adobe, Resolve, Office, for instance? Or
| AutoHotkey or equivalent?
|
| 0: https://github.com/davatorium/rofi
| PhilippGille wrote:
| Davinci Resolve has official support for Linux
| NexRebular wrote:
| ...and unofficial support for FreeBSD
|
| https://github.com/NapoleonWils0n/davinci-resolve-freebsd-
| ja...
| brushfoot wrote:
| Oh wow, thanks for this. I had filed it under "Windows and
| Mac only" in my head for some reason. Now I see that it was
| originally Linux only!?
|
| Amazing that this free-to-download application supports
| Linux when Adobe doesn't. Or maybe not so amazing given
| their different approaches.
| badsectoracula wrote:
| About AutoHotKey, you can do similar stuff as long as you are
| using X11 as there are various utilities for it, such as
| xdotool[0]. There is even an AutoHotKey-for-Linux project[1]
| (it also needs X11 - the author did try to port it to Wayland
| but gave up). For Wayland there are some alternatives like
| ydotool[2] (actually AFAIK since ydotool uses some daemon to
| inject events it works with anything, not just Wayland, but
| on the other hand it only provides a basic tiny subset of
| xdotool's commands) but the core protocol isn't particularly
| friendly to such automation.
|
| [0] https://github.com/jordansissel/xdotool
|
| [1] https://github.com/phil294/AHK_X11
|
| [2] https://github.com/ReimuNotMoe/ydotool
| bee_rider wrote:
| I suspect the problem they were indicating with "AutoHotKey
| scripts, lots of them" is that they just have a lot of
| scripts they'd need to convert. I get it--even switching to
| a new WM or distro can be a real pain.
| badsectoracula wrote:
| Well, they did mention "AHK or equivalent" so it sounds
| like converting them isn't out of the question.
| lukevp wrote:
| Things that used to be prohibitive are made much easier
| with AI these days. Especially tasks like this that do
| something fairly small and isolated and are easy to test.
| willis936 wrote:
| ydotool helps bridge the gap in wayland. xdotool
| replacements ate even more essential since wayland strips
| away most of the hooks into windows.
| majkinetor wrote:
| There is nothing like AHK. All mentioned tools are toys in
| comprison.
| layer8 wrote:
| Agreed. AHK and Windows' amenability to such things is an
| important reason why Windows is still my preferred GUI by
| far.
| meltyness wrote:
| Linux for me is all about customization and control,
| particularly of hardware, which you'd usually do for
| optimization (performance, workflow, latency, stability),
| which is fun if you care about optimization and efficiency,
| but for "good enough/I'm used to it/I'm a satisfied paying
| customer" I suppose there's no reason to investigate or risk.
| The market has poured loads of capital into satisfying PC
| multimedia use-case.
|
| I'd suspect there's probably versions of all those that have
| been made to function basically through WINE.
|
| If your curious, it's very easy to use it as a hypervisor,
| and pull out what you can, though IOMMU/SR-IOV might be
| tricky.
|
| Alternatively, checking if Blender/GIMP service your use
| cases wouldn't even require switching...
|
| AutoHotKey has been solved a lot of different ways, for sure.
|
| But yeah, granular detailed control over your hardware is
| still the primary use-case for Linux, so if you view bad
| defaults, annoying install procedures, occasional show
| stopping bugs a hindrance rather than an opportunity, maybe
| it's not a strong candidate.
| brushfoot wrote:
| I hear that. I enjoy that kind of tinkering; I just have
| too much on my plate with my business to go as deep into it
| as I used to. But I'm still interested in Linux, if only
| because it's a much-needed third option. I've been on and
| off it as a daily driver over the years.
|
| I'm guessing others here who are primarily on Windows can
| relate to this. We've been disappointed with what Apple and
| Microsoft are doing, and we want, not necessarily more
| customization of our OS, just less interference.
| instagib wrote:
| 1. office.com
|
| 2. Google drive/docs/*
|
| 3. Hacky office on Linux work around - several found on
| github
|
| Davinci Resolve seems to run faster on Linux.
| upboundspiral wrote:
| I don't use it as much nowadays but https://github.com/ublue-
| os/aurora (kde desktop + automatic updates + baked in nvidia
| drivers) got me an as painless as possible nvidia experience
| (on a laptop I got my nvidia gpu to power down while idle
| which had been a huge time sink trying to figure out how to
| do on my own). Didn't notice any screen tearing personally,
| but that's probably something that depends on what
| applications / workflows one has.
|
| In terms of office compatibility OnlyOffice iirc has the best
| compatibility. Easy to install via flatpak (I really enjoy
| this move in desktop linux because now I can easily remove
| network access from apps / set the permissions I want).
|
| The only thing that seems unsurmountable is probably Adobe,
| not sure how much of a dealbreaker that is.
| noAnswer wrote:
| - Davinci Resolve
|
| Has nativ support.
|
| - Adobe suite
|
| - Microsoft Office
|
| https://www.winboat.app But beta.
|
| - AutoHotkey scripts, lots of them
|
| I'm afraid there is no easy way.
| https://pyautogui.readthedocs.io/en/latest/
|
| - Issues with my laptop's Nvidia card
|
| Get AMD.
|
| > I don't have time for anymore (solopreneur)
|
| Fair. Second PC to play around from time to time is probably
| the best in this case. But I fully understand, unless as a
| hobby, that infesting a lot of time makes little sense.
| pkulak wrote:
| I would vote for Bluefin: https://projectbluefin.io/
|
| It's very similar to Bazzite, which you listed, but not gamer
| focused. You get an easy install, auto updates (without
| reboots), and a bulletproof, immutable OS that is nearly
| impossible to break.
|
| If you want bling and tiling, Omarchy is the new hotness:
| https://omarchy.org/
| drbw wrote:
| Omarchy "by dhh"? Nope, maybe not.
| dimator wrote:
| Out of the loop, why not?
| sugarpimpdorsey wrote:
| An open source developer (the creator of Ruby on Rails
| and Omarchy Linux) made a political comment someone
| didn't like. Now there is a concerted effort by a small
| group of terminally online histrionics to ruin his life
| and get all his projects cancelled. The comment was
| apparently made on his personal blog and not in any
| official capacity.
| ColonelBlimp wrote:
| As far as I know, this is the blog post that led to the
| backlash https://world.hey.com/dhh/as-i-remember-
| london-e7d38e64
| McGlockenshire wrote:
| > made a political comment someone didn't like
|
| It should be noted that this specific framing ("it's just
| a disagreement," "someone didn't like it," "it's nothing
| big") is used by the people that, instead, _like_ the
| "comment." It's an extremely common pattern. So is one of
| the words he uses later, "histrionics."
|
| The comment in question is an ethnonationalist blog post.
| Not a _comment_ somewhere, but an actual goddamn essay.
| But you don 't have to take my word on it, you can read
| it yourself:
|
| https://world.hey.com/dhh/as-i-remember-london-e7d38e64
|
| You should also click through his archive for more,
| because this isn't really new for him, it's just taking
| it to a new low.
|
| > by a small group of terminally online histrionics
|
| Again, witness the minimization of the actual thing he
| said and the redirection to the critics. Why? It's the
| argument pattern they've adopted.
|
| The term that the parent post would be looking for it
| actually "social shaming." You see, shame used to be an
| effective tool against bigotry. Not wanting to associate
| with bigots isn't _histrionics_. On the contrary, being
| OK with bigotry is bad, and wrong!
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| This is false. I do not, in fact, have an opinion one way
| or the other about his blog post. I don't care at all
| what the man has to say about politics. But I still
| disapprove of people trying to drag his politics into the
| thread, and start flame wars, every time the man comes
| up.
| majkinetor wrote:
| He expresses his opinions on his own blog. You are being
| extremely toxic in public.
| zaptheimpaler wrote:
| I'm one of the immigrant groups people don't seem to like
| very much these days, but even I recognize some degree of
| ethnonationalism or desire to restrict immigration is NOT
| bigotry. I can empathize how jarring it must be to begin
| to feel like a minority in your own country - even if
| they aren't minorities nationally, they may be in local
| urban pockets. Unfettered immigration IS causing problems
| in many places, is often supported by businesses looking
| for cheap labor and it's absolutely reasonable to be
| opposed to it.
|
| Moreover, the false equivalence you're drawing between
| opposition to immigration and bigotry is part of what let
| the problem fester in the first place. I think people
| should be allowed to oppose immigration without being
| called racist, its not the same thing. The open bigotry
| and racism by the right in many countries is partly a
| reaction to this false equivalence. They saw immigration
| in some cases as causing social disorder, as a tool to
| suppress wages, as causing increased crime etc. and they
| were forcefed a message of "all immigration is good and
| any opposition is racist" to reasonable objections. No
| one is obligated to accept every person who wants to come
| in.
| queenkjuul wrote:
| Go read his recent blog post about England for the
| English and how cool he thinks Tommy Robinson is
| lukevp wrote:
| You can have a negative opinion of DHH, but why not provide
| some context as to why your dislike of him would cause you
| to think this Linux distro is a bad option? I don't know
| anything about the distro.
| McGlockenshire wrote:
| Not wanting to use the works of / a project lead by
| someone that holds beliefs that are repulsive to you is a
| perfectly valid reason.
| LeoPanthera wrote:
| Having half of the demo screenshot on the front page taken up
| by Grok is a bad sign. A very bad sign.
| Defenestresque wrote:
| In addition, and there are a few of these floating around but
| this is my devloater of choice, may I suggest
| https://github.com/Raphire/Win11Debloat ?
|
| Despite the fact that it mostly runs in powershell, it still
| has a better UX then the majority of Microsoft apps. (Except
| for the confusion about their only GUI pop-up window, you put a
| check mark next to the built-in apps you want removed, which
| was led me to reread the instructions to make sure I had it
| right the first time I used it).
|
| It has both built-in sane default for people who just want to
| debloat Windows 10/11, along with a "custom" option which takes
| less than 60 seconds to get through but gives you all the
| customizability you need.
|
| (No connection with the author except mad respect.)
|
| --sent from my Linux desktop, but alas..
| tsycho wrote:
| The only reason I use Windows is for playing some old games
| (primarily Age of Empires II: DE) that only work well on
| Windows. In the AoE2 case, I also need CaptureAge that only
| works on Windows.
|
| The point is that even though I have 95% de-Microsoftized my
| life for the past 2 decades, I still need to run Windows for a
| few specific flows, and I run into the same issues as the
| article author here.
| Alupis wrote:
| AoE2 runs great on Linux[1]
|
| [1] https://www.protondb.com/app/813780
| brooke2k wrote:
| CaptureAge does not, however.
| Modified3019 wrote:
| I don't use it myself, but this recently updated gist
| seems to have it working: https://gist.github.com/Kjir/da
| db0a2bc1a71aa265cfdbecaf7569b...
| IshKebab wrote:
| The best solution is Windows IoT LTSC. It has none of this crap
| and you also don't have to deal with Linux's crap.
| cortesoft wrote:
| I use Linux for almost all my machines, but I have too many
| games that can only run on windows.
| grishka wrote:
| And Windows itself still costs money somehow, despite clearly
| acting as a free product.
| vee-kay wrote:
| Windows 10 was indeed offered free worldwide to users already
| using older licenced versions of Windows.
|
| Microsoft even touted Windows 10 as last version of Windows.
|
| But it was typical bait-and-switch gambit by Micro$oft, and
| support for Windows 10 is ending in Oct 2025 (rejecting the
| pleas from thousands of companies worldwide to extend its Win10
| support for longer while), because M$ thinks everyone will
| migrate to Windows 11 (not free).
|
| However, many Win10 users will remain on Win10 for years (just
| as they had stuck around with Win7/Win8 for years), and many
| will migrate to Linux or MacOS instead.
|
| Microsoft will out find the hard way that people can be as
| stubborn as it can be.
| eptcyka wrote:
| Microsoft will learn nothing they didn't know before. They've
| operated like this before, and their bottom line will not
| suffer.
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| W10 is actually still the majority of windows versions. You
| can get 1 year extended support by switching to an online
| admin login & syncing to ONeDrive or buying it (with $ or MS
| points - whatever that is) and businesses can by 3 x1 year of
| escalating priced support. Support for win10 ends on Tuesday
| (oct 14)!
|
| I know all this because my desktop that can easily run
| triple-A video games isn't good enough (secure boot) to be
| upgraded, so I'm supposed to buy a MS surface and use it as a
| boat anchor I guess...
| vee-kay wrote:
| Then you'll be glad to know that you can bypass the TPM2.0
| (Secure Boot) check that Win11 installation requires.
|
| https://www.tomshardware.com/how-to/bypass-windows-11-tpm-
| re...
|
| https://gist.github.com/asheroto/5087d2a38b311b0c92be2a4f23
| f...
|
| So you can upgrade to Win11 even on an older PC. No need to
| pay through the nose for extended Win10 Support.
|
| But in my personal experience, Win10 runs better on older
| PCs than Win11. I also prefer the Win1o0 start menu, to the
| Win11 one.
| a022311 wrote:
| Yeah you can run Windows 11 on most Windows 10 machines,
| but in exchange for "better security" you get a bloated
| interface that just bogs down your perfectly fine
| computer. Windows as a platform has so many security
| holes that I think the chances of getting pwned by a very
| specific Windows 10-only exploit are realistically zero.
| toast0 wrote:
| > because M$ thinks everyone will migrate to Windows 11 (not
| free).
|
| Pretty sure upgrade to Windows 11 is free for Windows 10
| licenses, too. If you need a new computer, sure, most people
| have a license tied to their computer, and they'll need a new
| license for that.
| izacus wrote:
| Can someone answer why is this ok on iOS and macOS but not
| Windows?
|
| They all provide backup via their own paid clouds and ask for an
| opt-in.
| rolph wrote:
| you sort of, answered your own question. the lack of user value
| for microsoft is a keystone.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keystone_(architecture)
| izacus wrote:
| Err... I don't understand what keystone means in your
| sentence.
| hedora wrote:
| Does iOS constantly (multiple times a day) spam you if you
| don't enable backup?
|
| (I've had it turned on for so long that I honestly don't know
| what they do.)
| CamJN wrote:
| I've never enabled iCloud backups and it has never pestered
| me about it after the initial iPhone setup process (the
| modern version of which doesn't even pester me then since it
| copies the setting from my last iPhone). I backup locally to
| my mac, which admittedly they made require a password each
| time now, which is a bit annoying, but it's not asking me to
| enable icloud backups regardless.
| musictubes wrote:
| They have always required a password for encrypted backups,
| do they now require for all local backups? Or is
| unencrypted not an option anymore?
| tallanvor wrote:
| No, but I haven't seen Windows ask multiple times a day
| either. But iOS does try to get me to turn on iCloud every
| time the phone reboots and somewhat randomly without
| rebooting.
| izacus wrote:
| Yes, it periodically pesters me with it.
| badsectoracula wrote:
| It is not ok on iOS or macOS or even Android or whatever else.
| The _feature_ to have some online storage with backup is fine,
| IMO, but what is not fine is the OS nagging you to use that
| feature. This thing must be opt-in and _only_ if the user
| themselves initiate it.
|
| Also it should not be locked to a single online storage
| provider but use some sort of standardized protocol (or at
| least some pluggable mechanism) to allow any online storage
| provider - including using self-hosted options - to work with
| it.
|
| This is how you make something that works for your users
| instead of taking advantage of them.
| GeekyBear wrote:
| On MacOS, you still get local user accounts and Apple's
| optional online features are still optional.
|
| Microsoft is using all the levers at their disposal to force
| users to use online Microsoft accounts to log onto their local
| computer and even turn on formerly optional features like One
| Drive.
|
| My assumption is that Microsoft is using their access to user
| data to build up everyone's advertising profile, and forcing
| you to be logged on through a Microsoft account makes sure that
| the data they collect is linked to a specific person.
|
| Windows Recall is another example of a "feature" they wanted to
| force on users that can be used to fill out everyone's
| advertising profile.
| izacus wrote:
| Why is your assumption for Microsoft different from Apple?
| stefanka wrote:
| Apple's main revenue is not from advertising but mostly
| from expensive hardware
| GeekyBear wrote:
| If Microsoft was worried about serving the needs of end
| users, wouldn't they offer free customer service like Apple
| does?
| numpad0 wrote:
| Frankly it's more of a fact than an occasionally seen odd
| double standard behavior at this point. It's literally not okay
| when Microsoft does it; iPhone users literally love this exact
| same feature. They should be working a lot harder on solving
| this mystery.
| Podrod wrote:
| I used to use Windows Backup with One Drive years ago but it just
| really pissed me off, especially with how My Documents is
| handled.
|
| There was that time I discovered several GB of screenshots had
| been automatically saved to My Pictures from some setting they
| snuck into the printscreen screen grab tool and then that of
| course those were automatically uploaded to the cloud. After
| disabling the option it would sometimes reenable itself.
|
| And game devs throwing random shit into My Documents was also
| fun. Ubisoft were terrible for this, after playing a game I'd
| notice a bunch of cache files they dumped into My Docs being
| uploaded. I mean putting save games and config files inside my
| docs is annoying enough, random cache files is just taking the
| piss.
|
| Also windows backup would mess up my desktop between systems on
| occasion which was also very fun!
|
| I disabled most of the shit but it was still annoying on
| occasion. Then a year or two ago I solved the problem by just
| using Linux for 90% of things, Mint at first but now Fedora, and
| grudgingly booting back into Windows for the other 10% of my
| needs.
| reddalo wrote:
| I agree, nowadays Linux seems like the only reliable solution.
| Even macOS, with the latest "liquid glass" update, feels like a
| toy for kids.
|
| I just wish the Affinity suite would be available for Linux
| too.
| Esophagus4 wrote:
| Having run Linux every day, I can say we're in trouble if
| that is the reliable option :)
|
| (Agree that Liquid Glass is miserable, though.)
| jaykru wrote:
| I've faced many fewer hiccups on CachyOS/Arch in the past
| few months than on Windows. In the first month of owning
| this hardware, I had an unexplained BSOD that actually
| bricked my whole Win11 install. And this is pretty
| recent/funky 2-in-1 hardware, not an old ThinkPad I've
| cherry-picked for good Linux support. This is an important
| moment for free software; the big platforms are finally
| cinching down on users hard enough that we have a shot at
| convincing regular people to join us. Please don't blow it
| with vague complaints.
| rufugee wrote:
| same experience here with Omarchy. it's been (mostly)
| flawless. the only reason i keep windows around at this
| point is fortnite.
| rwyinuse wrote:
| Yep, I dual boot Linux Mint & Windows 11 and only bother
| with the latter when I need MS Teams, or some other
| proprietary software that tends to be more reliable on
| Windows. In terms of performance and user experience Mint
| wins easily.
| a022311 wrote:
| I only rarely need to use Microsoft Office or Paint.NET
| and a Windows VM on Linux has solved the problem entirely
| for me. I don't know if videoconferencing would work as
| well, but I'd really recommend giving it a try! I've
| already gone without a proper Windows install for almost
| 2 years.
| cogman10 wrote:
| Since MS is making the office UX web based, I'd suggest
| people try just loading 365 in a browser like edge (It's
| generally flawless for MS products). Especially apps like
| Teams.
|
| Once you realize that the dedicated app is basically just
| a browser shell, using a real browser becomes somewhat of
| a no brainer.
|
| Edge even supports PWAs on linux which can give you the
| "app" experience without the app.
| BLKNSLVR wrote:
| But the browser versions of Office products royally suck.
| I still actively use the 'open in app' option over the
| default action of opening a document / spreadsheet in a
| browser window. I wholly disagree with _It 's generally
| flawless for MS products_
|
| The Office-in-browser experience is laggy and slow and
| long-learnt familiarities are gone.
|
| Additional old-man whinge: Outlook keeps wanting to open
| in a browser window now. I have enough things open in a
| browser that are difficult enough to manage that I don't
| need Outlook getting lost in that forest as well. It's
| convenient having a separate Taskbar icon that will
| definitely open my Calendar or Email.
|
| When everything's a browser tab, what's the point of the
| taskbar?
|
| When everything's a browser tab then the browser is the
| Operating System.
|
| Every day I'm forced to use Microsoft at work, I'm
| increasingly glad I ditched it at home.
| dotancohen wrote:
| I don't know how it is today, but about 3 years ago I
| worked in a shop that used MS Teams. I was sneaky enough
| to get myself a Kubuntu install when everybody else was
| on Windows, but I had no problems using Teams on Kubuntu
| back then.
| distances wrote:
| The Teams Linux client was discontinued but it works well
| enough in a browser.
| bee_rider wrote:
| The Open Source ecosystem is a bit weird in that your
| system can be as reliable or not as you want, depending on
| what projects you follow. It really truly is a mixed bag in
| the sense that you can actually have a solid setup if you
| are happy with it being boring.
| dapperdrake wrote:
| Incidentally, most people seem to want their computer to
| be the good kind of boring.
|
| Especially non-tech people. Look at how popular Ubuntu
| VMs are with research chemists. And successful chemists
| tend to be highly technical.
| bee_rider wrote:
| I'm not sure what the good kind of boring is, if we could
| define it, it might be tautologically true that that's
| the thing people want.
|
| > Look at how popular Ubuntu VMs are with research
| chemists.
|
| Are they? I actually have no idea.
|
| > And successful chemists tend to be highly technical.
|
| But not necessarily in any IT sense. STEM skills are very
| specific.
|
| Sorry, it looks like I'm just being petulant and saying
| "I'm not sure" about your every sentence, haha, that
| wasn't my intent but it is what I ended up doing I guess.
| the__alchemist wrote:
| > The Open Source ecosystem is a bit weird in that your
| system can be as reliable or not as you want
|
| I'm going to dig into this a little. This feels like
| shifting responsibility onto the user when things don't
| go well. E.g. comparing the platonic ideal of Linux when
| analyzing practical options. I make lots of mistakes in
| all aspects of my life. I know historically, and
| projecting into the future that I will get into trouble
| with Linux, so I don't daily-drive it. Yes, there are
| always ways to fix things when a system gets in a bad
| state, but there is a time and effort cost to this.
|
| Saying it's my fault for breaking it doesn't help restore
| the system. e.g. "Should have used the LTS release",
| "Should have only installed software from the package
| manager", "Shouldn't have used sudo", "Shouldn't have
| edited a system file without knowing what you're doing".
| If I was doing those things, it probably seemed like the
| best of available options, e.g. the only way to make a
| certain piece of hardware or software work.
| bee_rider wrote:
| I think it is an accurate description of the situation. I
| agree that responsibility is accumulating at the user's
| feet in an unfortunate manner.
|
| But somebody must be responsible for making your computer
| work, who should it be?
|
| The companies that sell operating systems don't seem to
| be fulfilling the obligation to make a bug free and user-
| friendly OS. The Open Source community never really had
| accepting that responsibility as a "business model"
| because they aren't businesses.
| 1718627440 wrote:
| But that's how it works with every other tool you own?
| Nobody is complaining about the pencil manufacturer when
| you choose to draw an image, which you later don't like.
| Same with using software to modify the state of the hard
| disk, which you don't like later.
|
| In Windows or Darwin you are not responsible, because you
| can't tell the computer what you want to do, but in a
| free OS, you can and do order what the computer is doing
| and that's why you also need to deal with the
| consequences.
| the__alchemist wrote:
| I agree! My thought is this: The mechanical pencil is
| drawing that image because there are a combination of
| settings on it don't work well for a given use case. When
| adjusting the settings, I get poor results, or something
| breaks. The schematics are available and parts are
| available for the repair, but the job still takes a
| while, and I don't know how to do it. My friend has fixed
| something like it before, but his pencil's controls were
| different, and some of the tools are no longer available
| for the way he did it. I would prefer if the pencil
| worked out of the box, because I'm an artist; not a
| pencil engineer.
|
| I instead buy a pencil from a different brand. It doesn't
| come in the color I want, but it's good enough, and lets
| me focus on the drawing. The pencil engineers and
| enthusiasts keep telling me the customizable mechanical
| pencil is much better. They love it, have learned its
| intricacies, and take pride in this.
| 999900000999 wrote:
| It really depends on your hardware/distro combo.
|
| Buy a newly announced Windows laptop with a new CPU
| model. Try Ubuntu, you're day is about to suck.
| yehat wrote:
| Seriously, such remarks add nothing except exposing
| intended bias. In other words that's called a trolling.
| brooke2k wrote:
| Holding the opinion that Linux is currently the most
| reliable OS option is "trolling"?
| asimovfan wrote:
| He's saying its not very good if thats the case. Which is
| not the case. I am satisfied with GNU+Linux. It doesn't
| work against me. It would be great if there were FOSS
| alternatives to the remaining proprietary software on my
| computers. Making it sound like linux is almost just as
| bad, does sound weird. Also nothing about what's actually
| that bad about "linux".
| a123b456c wrote:
| I would call it a constructive contrarian claim, quite
| distinct from trolling.
| psadauskas wrote:
| MacOS and Windows might break[1] less often than Linux, but
| when it does I stand less of a chance of fixing it. Linux
| is usually more fiddly, but if does something I don't want
| its usually only a few minutes to find the config file or a
| plugin for the Desktop Environment to alter the behavior.
|
| [1]: "Break" here meaning "behaves in a way I don't want"
| delusional wrote:
| > feels like a toy for kids.
|
| I wish unserious complaining like this wasn't mixed with
| actual technical criticism of software.
| bigyabai wrote:
| It is very serious. I love the way Catalina and Mojave
| looks; dark mode or light mode, it just _screams_
| "professional" at the top of it's lungs.
|
| Big Sur is, somehow, the exact opposite. Corners are
| rounded off as if they could hurt someone, and margins are
| padded more than a cell in solitary confinement. Space is
| wasted everywhere. It's Fischer-Price design philosophy and
| I'm hardly the only one to point it out.
|
| In a side-by-side, so much screen real estate gets wasted
| that it's genuinely disgusting:
| https://www.andrewdenty.com/blog/assets/img/macos-new-
| ui/fin...
| thewebguyd wrote:
| Agree on all points. Tahoe ruined macOS for me. Not only
| does it waste screen real estate, but it's not performant
| at all and my M4 pro is no slouch.
|
| Just feels like I'm using an iPad now.
|
| Here's a fun exercise. Look at how huge the window
| borders are to achieve that insane corner radius. The
| cursor changes to the resize arrow at the corner before
| it even touches the window, the bottom arrow is a good
| 4-5px away from the window lol.
| dapperdrake wrote:
| Touch and mouse interfaces simply are different. After
| over a decade of pretending otherwise there are now
| sufficiently many counter-examples.
| delusional wrote:
| > Space is wasted everywhere.
|
| Sure, that's a reasonable technical criticism. Wasted
| screen space is, in my opinion, an issue in modern
| interface design trends. Good design uses space in a
| thoughtful manner. The designers of macOS clearly don't
| agree with us, but we can have a reasonable technical
| discussion about that. We can consult the data. We can
| consult the users.
|
| > It's Fischer-Price design philosophy
|
| You're mixing the two again. Fisher-Price was not
| consulted in the design of modern macOS interfaces, and
| complaining about not liking the design language cheapens
| all your actual points. No real discussion can be had
| around this taste garbage. You're rage baiting.
| barbs wrote:
| It objectively does feel like a toy with those rounded
| corners though. How do you know Fischer-Price wasn't
| consulted?
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| It doesn't seem like a toy to me. Therefore, it is not
| objective but is just your subjective opinion. Which is
| fine, but don't overstate your opinions as being
| objective when they aren't.
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| I think that "serious" is not the right word here. But
| rather, saying "it's like a toy" is not _constructive_.
| When someone says "it looks like a toy" that tells me
| nothing about what they don't like about it. Saying "I
| don't like the rounded corners and wasted space" is
| something concrete you can have a discussion about, so
| it's better to use that kind of phrasing.
| bigyabai wrote:
| Toy design isn't objectively bad. Windows XP has many
| colorful, misshapen buttons and they're _amazing_ for the
| vision-impaired, same goes for Apple 's _Aqua_ UI.
| Fischer-Price design language is arguably why the iPhone
| is so popular, when you deploy it with _intent_ the
| results can be spectacular.
|
| What is the intent of dumbing-down the Mac design
| language? iOS superfans already have devices to use, the
| Mac has to compete in the _professional_ segment of the
| market, not the casual one. The only motivation I can see
| is to enforce solidarity with VisionOS, which by most
| accounts seems to be a professional flop too. An
| ecosystem shouldn 't aim for superficial similarity
| across devices, each experience should enforce their
| unique strengths/weaknesses in the UI and then network
| their state to each-other in the background. Apple _used
| to_ know this.
| astral_drama wrote:
| Tahoe crippled my Intel 2019 MBP and cost me plenty of time
| and incurred a lot of frustration until I gave up and
| reformat the ssd.
|
| I am switching to Linux for both my desktop and laptop from
| here on out.
| unlikelytomato wrote:
| Does a premium hardware solution exist that competes with
| MacBook on practical battery life?
| layer8 wrote:
| Probably not quite, though recent laptops improved. But
| on a desktop setup it doesn't matter anyway.
| astral_drama wrote:
| I'm giving the Asus Proart P16 a try, if I was trying for
| maximum battery life I'd probably avoid the discrete gpu
| (e.g. a zenbook or similar). I am not a full time road
| warrior so battery life is important, but not absolutely
| critical. There may be some options out with better
| battery life, but I haven't been focused on this metric
| too closely.
|
| I just don't want to be sidetracked by overly aggressive
| and pushy decisions by my OS vendor anymore. I've been
| happy with the stability of my Debian/Ubuntu systems for
| getting work done. I have been using apple laptops for
| 10+ years, and I still like their build quality, but I
| don't like the direction macOS (or Windows) is heading.
| sys_64738 wrote:
| Tahoe's saving grace is docker support which is superb now.
| citizenkeen wrote:
| With Affinity (likely) switching to a subscription model, I
| wouldn't hold out hope they're avoiding enshitification.
| the__alchemist wrote:
| My 2c. I agree with the parent and article: OneDrive can be a
| major problem with Windows. They push it on you, your
| personal documents can be moved to OneDrive without your
| permission etc. Confusing and user-hostile design.
|
| Linux has its own idiosyncrasies, which may or may not make
| it worth. E.g. ABI diaspora, installing things can be
| inconsistent and high-effort, the cycle of copy+pasting CLI
| commands and system file edits from old forum posts or these
| days LLMs to fix something, treating your PC like a multi-
| user system that has an admin by default, etc. My general
| experience is that installation and things work smoothly with
| the built-in or package-managed software, but gradually
| degrade as you start installing software and drivers.
| Terr_ wrote:
| > treating your PC like a multi-user system that has an
| admin by default, etc.
|
| I think I have the opposite orientation: In the past when
| family and friends needed help to install/rescue their
| machine (on Windows versions that supported it) I always
| ensured there was a separate "Manager" admin login and then
| made their main account "limited", albeit with UAC popups.
|
| If nothing else, it made repeat visits much easier.
| al_borland wrote:
| Do you think it looks like a toy just because of how it
| looks, or because of how it works?
|
| Spotlight got a major update in macOS 26 where it can now
| perform actions. I can open spotlight and type "run <enter>
| <some terminal command or script>" and get the output right
| there, selecting it will put the resulting text into my
| current window. 16:16 up 23:27, 1 user,
| load averages: 1.72 1.78 1.90
|
| There is my uptime posted in HN with only Spotlight and my
| hands never leaving the keyboard.
|
| Spotlight is also context aware... Say I run across some text
| in another language: Spiegami come funziona
| questo coso.
|
| I can highlight, invoke spotlight, type translate, it will
| recognize I want to translate the selected text, translate it
| inside of Spotlight, and if arrow down and press enter, it
| will paste the translated text over the original text, if
| editable, or copy it to the clipboard. There is also a built-
| in clipboard history.
|
| I'm not a fan of all the UI choices that have been made, but
| those will get ironed out over time. Meanwhile, I get some
| more powerful out of the box features without needing to
| resort to 3rd party apps.
| nolist_policy wrote:
| It's interesting how ChromeOS respects your choices more than
| Windows here.
|
| There is a setting to disable Google Drive and it just works.
| It won't auto-enable, no popups or nags or anything. Even
| Google Docs/Workspace falls back to a trimmed down offline
| version.
| crote wrote:
| On the other hand, Android keeps nagging me about enabling
| backups in Google Photos. I'm always one accidental click of
| the huge "Okay!" button in an unexpected popup away from
| having my data being uploaded to Google.
| a022311 wrote:
| I've solved this long ago by disabling the app. Sadly, that
| means I can't view videos in the gallery, but I believe
| it's a fair compromise. I'd recommend taking a look at open
| source alternatives like Lavender Photos [1] or Fossify
| Gallery [2]
|
| [1]: https://github.com/kaii-lb/LavenderPhotos
|
| [2]: https://github.com/FossifyOrg/Gallery
| distances wrote:
| This was a genuinely baffling product decision. I couldn't
| continue using Photos due to this nagging dialog.
|
| Google has another photo gallery app called just Gallery,
| that's what I'm now using.
|
| https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.an
| d...
| 9x39 wrote:
| The PMs can't start out being aggressive, though, that comes
| after dominating the market, right? ChromeOS and Google Drive
| are generally good products which are probably so as to get
| penetration and stickiness.
|
| Perhaps Gmail is a better example to see the incumbent acting
| as it wishes, enabling and disabling features without worry
| about the end user's POV.
| close04 wrote:
| After setting up an Android phone for someone recently, I
| think it's stuffed with dark patterns. The amount of times
| that OS was pushing me to enable or opt-out from syncing
| different things to their cloud and generally sabotage the
| privacy via various settings was staggering.
|
| Windows is certainly on the same path but I'm not sure how
| far ahead or behind they are in the competition to screw
| their users over with these dark patterns. They only have to
| trick you once.
| numpad0 wrote:
| It enables in non-consensual manners, break apps and
| games(because paths change and APIs work differently), clings
| onto your files even if you tried to save them from the
| OneDrive folder, and _throws a tantrum and irreversibly delete
| your files if you dare unlink the PC and disable it_.
|
| I don't know why they commit to especially the last part. To
| me, it feels like that is why Microsoft's Windows efforts are
| getting a lot of negative press lately; there must be lots of
| writers and media individuals who had lost data to that exact
| behavior who are now perpetually biased against them for that
| reason.
|
| Just why?
| keyringlight wrote:
| I think it's the curse of windows being attached to a tech
| company, and a tech company seems to want to keep pursuing
| cool things(tm) instead of boring maintenance on a utility.
| Over the years lots of little extra non-essential
| functionality has crept into windows to where you could
| almost compare it with a lightweight linux distro, or that
| it's hard to draw the line where the OS ends, and then you're
| getting into territory where everyone relies upon a different
| subset of what's available which MS has been increasingly
| able to use to justify adding more 'essential' features for
| modern computing.
| justsomehnguy wrote:
| > cool things(tm) instead of boring maintenance on a utilit
|
| You can't re-sell a boring utility every one/two/three
| years.
|
| Nobody wants it - not the top management (bonuses for the
| _revenue growth_ ), nor the middle management (bonuses for
| the succesful _new_ projects), nor the guys who implements
| the things ( _reconginition_ for the new projects).
|
| Or talking simpler - KPI. And there is no 'we improved the
| stability for 0.0000002% of clients' indicator along with
| 'customers are happy with the thing we sold them in 2017'.
|
| And don't forget what it was some fruit company what even
| wasn't in the corporate which made it fashionable to have a
| 'totes new and refreshing experience (along with a hefty
| price tag)' every year or two.
| brianwawok wrote:
| Stability, performance, security, all of this stuff
| doesn't matter until it becomes a crisis, then it's the
| most important thing in the world
| userbinator wrote:
| _don 't know why they commit to especially the last part._
|
| MS thinks it knows better than you. It thinks its owns your
| data. Remember that this has happened before (7 years ago!):
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18189139
| aldebran wrote:
| ^this is good, legit feedback for why this product/feature
| isn't good. It's not just "MSFT BAD!". Thanks for sharing.
| Telaneo wrote:
| The list of mind-boggling design decisions MS has made at
| this point is so long at this point that I don't blame people
| any more for saying 'MS bad'. Just pointing at the start menu
| search and Everything tells you everything you need to know,
| and more or less sets the tone you can expect from MS
| decision making.
| abtinf wrote:
| Config files should go elsewhere, but save files seem like the
| should definitely go in mydocs.
| Telaneo wrote:
| Maybe, but not by default. But games as a rule don't give you
| the option to change this, so you're stuck with that one game
| and that one program using My Documents as a dumping ground
| without your consent, and now My Documents is no longer
| really your folder any more, at which point people make a
| folder on their desktop or whereever else called My Documents
| But For Real This Time or whatever.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| I've been a Mac & Linux user since about 2007 or so, and I had
| no idea what Windows had become. Then a couple weeks ago I
| caved and built my son a Windows gaming PC. Egads, Windows is
| annoying! Even more so than I remember! I'm amazed that people
| actually put up with it for their daily driver. Right on
| schedule, my son came to me yesterday evening and asked what he
| should do about the backup warning. It didn't give any option
| other than enabling backup or telling it to remind later. WTF.
|
| Not to say that MacOS isn't occasionally very annoying as well.
| It is. But as a tool it's also much more useful than vanilla
| Windows, which helps a little.
| zwnow wrote:
| People dont care about their operating system. Most Mac users
| never learn Mac and most Windows users never learn windows.
| They use their computers for emails, some presentations and
| occasional gaming. They dont want to learn different kinds of
| software. Which is fine. For most people its just a power
| tool they never read the manual for. They dont even know what
| other tools there are so they dont know that life could be
| better, by not using windows.
| toast0 wrote:
| > Most Mac users never learn Mac and most Windows users
| never learn windows.
|
| Why bother when annual releases will change everything?
|
| > For most people its just a power tool they never read the
| manual for.
|
| What manual?
| zwnow wrote:
| You should read the manual to how metaphors work
| vee-kay wrote:
| I just wish MacOS would allow me to have the Minimize,
| Maximize/Restore,Close buttons on top-right corner (default
| in Windows), rather than top-left (which is counter-
| intuitive for right-handed users, using the mouse).
|
| Even Linux allows such basic customization.
|
| If Apple allowed this type of user-friendly customisation
| on MacOS, I suspect a lot of Windows users will migrate to
| Mac.
| JadeNB wrote:
| > I just wish MacOS would allow me to have the Minimize,
| Maximize/Restore,Close buttons on top-right corner
| (default in Windows), rather than top-left (which is
| counter-intuitive for right-handed users, using the
| mouse).
|
| > Even Linux allows such basic customization.
|
| Does Windows allow such customization? I think that's the
| relevant comparison. Both macOS and Windows are trying to
| be "user-friendly," which more and more means "take what
| we tell you and like it." I personally am a techie and
| like the Unix way of exposing everything that one can
| imagine to customization, but I do know that I'm often
| lost when I want to learn a new piece of customization-
| minded software and have to decide how to, and whether
| to, twiddle lots of knobs before even getting into just
| using it. I think that there's definitely a reasonable
| place for an OS that spends its time getting those
| settings right so that the user doesn't have to worry
| about them.
|
| (Whether any particular setting is right or wrong is, of
| course, going to depend on the user. I'm a Mac user,
| there are some defaults I've always hated, and others
| that I think used to be good but are moving in the wrong
| direction. But, so far, I stick with it at least in part
| because there are lots of other things it gets right, and
| it doesn't feel fundamentally hostile to me in the way
| that Windows does.)
| unlikelytomato wrote:
| I have extreme doubts that there is any meaningful number
| of windows users holding out on trying macos based on
| such a thing.
|
| The users are much more simple than this. Most have never
| even tried Mac. If they want to, they will just buy one
| the next time they need a computer and accept the new
| experience as being the new norm.
| radley wrote:
| > I just wish MacOS would allow me to have the Minimize,
| Maximize/Restore,Close buttons on top-right corner
| (default in Windows), rather than top-left (which is
| counter-intuitive for right-handed users, using the
| mouse).
|
| Classic Mac OS was released first, with well-considered,
| consistent design standards. Windows arrived almost 2
| years later, and in the interest of not looking it like
| copied Macs, Microsoft essentially flipped the positions
| of everything, including window controls, toolbars,
| desktop icon placement, and button order. (Yes, both
| copied Bell Labs).
|
| Windows has no standards, so maybe they could provide
| that kind of option instead.
| 3form wrote:
| Exactly! The lesson that Microsoft doesn't want to learn.
| Delk wrote:
| On their own devices, lots of non-power users probably just
| accept whatever Windows suggests. Enterprise versions of
| Windows either don't have a lot of the crap or they allow it
| to be disabled by company IT.
|
| Techie users might just find tweaks online that allows
| disabling dark patterns on their devices.
|
| I don't know how people who care but aren't techie enough to
| install workarounds (or to tell good ones from bad ones)
| deal.
| excalibur wrote:
| > Enterprise versions of Windows either don't have a lot of
| the crap or they allow it to be disabled by company IT.
|
| Generally if the company is deploying Windows they are
| using OneDrive, although the exact configuration will vary.
|
| Windows has always been designed with corporate customers
| in mind. That's true more than ever today, the whole Azure
| ecosystem is very lucrative for them. Personal Windows
| users have always been an afterthought, but starting around
| Windows 10 they became less important than their own data.
| Which Microsoft has been getting away with brazenly
| claiming as its own.
| RHSeeger wrote:
| My Mac tells me 5+ times per day that it's unable to backup
| something or another because I'm not logged into the Apple
| cloud or whatever it's called. And there's not obvious way to
| make it stop.
|
| This is not unique to Windows.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| I don't run into that, but I do have an iCloud account and
| I'm logged into it, which probably helps. I'm logged into
| my Microsoft account on Windows, too, but it is still
| pushy.
| aeon_ai wrote:
| Bail and go Linux.
| anjel wrote:
| I think you're using "annoying" here to describe what is in
| fact, flat-out inappropriate.
| dingdingdang wrote:
| The only, as per personal exp, way to properly setup a Win11
| machine these days is strictly via LTSC release and WinUtil
| from Chris Titus + local account - clean and no "feature"
| updates for almost 10 yrs. Add to that Chocolatey for package
| management that takes away the "every piece of software adds
| it's own autoupdater crap"-pain and the OS is suddenly very
| capable for almost all computing needs.
| magic_hamster wrote:
| It's worth mentioning that 10 also has LTSC variants, the
| IoT LTSC version in particular will be supported with
| security updates until 2032 if I recall.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| Is buying the Enterprise version another method? I heard
| someone suggest that, but without any explanation other
| than it allowed you to use Windows without a Microsoft
| account. Is there something that makes it unsuitable for
| gaming?
| okanat wrote:
| You cannot simply buy Enterprise edition. It is
| subscription-only. It comes with Enterprise subscription
| to M365.
| 3form wrote:
| It's funny to me to see that to achieve this Linux-like
| result you need to go through the Linux-like installation
| process.
| hiq wrote:
| > Linux-like installation process
|
| Maybe that of 20 years ago, it's very smooth these days
| if you use e.g. Debian.
| pityJuke wrote:
| Personally, I use ShutUp10!, and after running it once, it
| settles everything down and Windows is my preferred OS
| experience.
| zaptheimpaler wrote:
| > And game devs throwing random shit into My Documents was also
| fun.
|
| I hate this problem with all OSes. We have folders that started
| out being places for users to put things like Pictures,
| Documents & home, but over time they get filled with crap from
| software and it's difficult to find your own files. We should
| have had a "program-files" subfolder or something by default in
| all these places to separate things that applications put there
| vs. things that you put there.
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| We do! On Windows, it's (user profile)\AppData. And to be
| fair, most software does use that. But there are always bad
| citizens that don't care and clutter up the user's documents
| folder.
| zaptheimpaler wrote:
| That's nice, I think Linux/XDG has some standards around
| this too, but they too are not enforced - and many people
| have no idea these standards even exist unless the OS warns
| or enforces these things. I think there might also be some
| gap between "these files are only internally needed by this
| software" vs. "these files are created by this software,
| but may be good to show them to the user". It's nice the
| OSes are making efforts to do that though!
| jowea wrote:
| Speaking for myself, but I would my game saves and config
| in the cloud if I were using OneDrive. That is however a
| separate issue from whether those files should be in the
| hidden appdata or in the visible my documents.
| codingrightnow wrote:
| I just bought my first windows 11 computer. Why are my personal
| folders like pictures and documents under a OneDrive folder?
| This is insane. Going to see how Ubuntu runs on it and
| hopefully never look back.
| vee-kay wrote:
| In Win10/Win11, you can move your user folders to another
| partition or folder path.
|
| Right-click on them in Explorer, go to Properties, click on
| Location tab, and type/select the new path for them, click
| Move... then that folder and its contents will be moved to
| new locate.
|
| I've movier following to D: partition as root-level folders:
| Contacts, Desktop, Documents, Downloads, Favorites, Links,
| Music, Pictures, Saved Games, Searches, Videos.
| qwerty456127 wrote:
| > especially with how My Documents is handled
|
| I stopped using these long ago because every other app you
| install puts something there so it becomes a landfill
| automatically.
|
| Just create an additional partition and put all your non-OS
| files there. This is a classic idea people have been using
| since the DOS days, still working great.
| CrossVR wrote:
| Since no one mentioned how to actually dismiss the notification
| forever:
|
| OneDrive is treated as a normal app that is installed by default,
| you can actually just uninstall it through Add or Remove Programs
| in the Control Panel.
| soupbowl wrote:
| During a major update it will be reinstalled.
| armada651 wrote:
| That's about as close to forever as you can get with
| Microsoft.
| 3eb7988a1663 wrote:
| Nuts. Is this still true? I just setup a Win11 Pro machine
| for a very non-technical person. Uninstalled OneDrive, hoping
| to minimize future pain when 90% of the needs are just a web
| browser and storing camera pictures.
|
| (No, Linux was not an option)
| 9x39 wrote:
| I have absolutely seen them reinstall components like that,
| force their AV back on, force Windows Update back on, etc.
| It's probably actually good imo for the users I've seen,
| but admittedly "computer says no" is infuriating if you're
| sure of what you want.
|
| Try using Group Policy to disable it. I think Applocker is
| on Win 11 Pro now - if it is, you can block the execution
| of whatever programs and DLLs you want. I've used that to
| block Windows Update.
| 3eb7988a1663 wrote:
| Well, I will at least throw in the Group Policy tweak
| when I have the chance. Thanks for the tip.
| 9x39 wrote:
| There is almost certainly a registry key you can set as
| well. 5 ways to do something, none documented officially.
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| Yeah for myself Pro licensing and domain is the way to go
| so I can configure Windows similar to my work network at
| home. But for people who have Home licenses I just set
| the registry keys. Windows Home doesn't have a UI to set
| policy, but it does obey it if the keys are there.
|
| (This is a must-have to turn off web browser antifeatures
| as well, you can't block extension install from the
| browser settings for any browser but you can by policy.)
| vee-kay wrote:
| Not just in Win11, AppLocker can be used in Win10 too.
|
| AppLocker is included with all editions of Windows except
| Windows 10 version 1809 or earlier.
|
| Applocker can help prevent users from running unwanted
| software (including DLLs and scripts).
|
| However, AppLocker requires Local Security Policy, which
| isn't available in Home edition of Windows, but it can be
| installed easily for free.
|
| https://www.thewindowsclub.com/local-security-policy-
| missing...
|
| Here's how to use AppLocker to block an unwanted app:
|
| https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/124008-use-applocker-
| all...
| queenkjuul wrote:
| OneDrive has yet to reappear on my Windows machines, but I
| mostly only use 10 still, 11 could be that shitty
| hulitu wrote:
| > Nuts. Is this still true?
|
| Yes. Microsoft wants to protect you. /s
| Alupis wrote:
| Along with Teams if you have Microsoft 365 for Business.
|
| Bejeweled and friends tend to show back up again on consumer
| machines too, I've noticed.
|
| Absolute headache...
| rs186 wrote:
| Or turn off all OneDrive notifications as a less intrusive
| method. It has worked for me well enough so far.
| qingcharles wrote:
| I've started using Tiny11 on all my setups, then running
| DeBloat afterwards. This removes every piece of crapware* and
| none of them seem to try to reinstall on update (so far,
| fingers crossed).
|
| https://ntdotdev.wordpress.com/2024/01/08/the-complete-tiny1...
|
| https://github.com/Raphire/Win11Debloat
|
| * be warned, this also removes Edge, so you have to grab your
| own browser installer of choice
| vee-kay wrote:
| I use Brave browser (a Chromium fork) on my old Win10 PC, and
| it is fast and stable even with tons of tabs/site open. One
| can disable its unnecessary features (VPN, Brave Rewards,
| etc).
|
| Please note that Brave browser in mobile these days gives
| problems for some websites like Reddit.com, etc. Same sites
| open fine with Edge (another Chromium fork) and Firefox
| (Gecko engine).
|
| I hate Chrome & Edge and their nasty of creating multiple
| instances and auto-starting and running in background even
| when I am not using the browser.
|
| If I recall right, Chrome uses to have an nasty memory
| leakage issue so it will keep chugging for more memory even
| if not in active use.
|
| Firefox uses to be sluggish, but it is better these days, and
| its extensions/plugins support (especially on Android!) is
| necessary to block ads & trackers (via uBlock Origin and
| Privacy Badger extension) is highly useful and necessary.
|
| I prefer Brave for PC and Firefox for Android.
| brirec wrote:
| > Do you think Microsoft understands consent?
|
| > ( ) Yes
|
| > (*) Remind me in 3 days
| Viliam1234 wrote:
| That's already an improvement over having the first option
| selected by default.
| Tepix wrote:
| Probably not voluntary - it's because preselecting the yes
| option is violating european laws.
| fainpul wrote:
| +----------------------------+ |
| | | Yes | |
| | +----------------------------+
|
| n lr
| icameron wrote:
| OP doesn't say why they are against free cloud backup, and it
| doesn't matter, but (like everything else in Windows) there's a
| registry setting you could change to disable the notification. I
| think it is
|
| ` HKCU\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Notifications\
| Settings\Microsoft.SkyDrive.Desktop\Enabled = 0 (DWORD) `
|
| https://www.urtech.ca/2018/03/solved-gpos-to-disable-notific...
| pkulak wrote:
| And folks say Linux setup is hard.
| a022311 wrote:
| Yeah, at least if something breaks, I can be proud that I
| broke it and not some company flipping switches behind the
| scenes...
| firefoxd wrote:
| Author here. I'm not against against free cloud back up. I was
| a Ubuntu One user before it shutdown. The problem isn't even
| that you can disable it via the registry.
|
| The problem is that looking at the presented options, you can
| basically choose "Yes" or "OK".
| 9x39 wrote:
| Yeah, Windows users are used to the setting schizophrenia
| (5-6 places to control things), but if we met Windows today
| in 2025 it would be ridiculous.
| reddalo wrote:
| Fine, there's a registry option. Do you think 99% of users even
| know what a registry is?
| pixl97 wrote:
| Hmm, I wonder if this setting can be 'read only' for the admin,
| or if MS tries to update it with the SYSTEM user.
| user____name wrote:
| I get frequent requests from like 4 vendors to get ""free""
| cloud backup.
| olyjohn wrote:
| Oh so Linux is hard because you have to sometimes use the
| command line. Then people suggest registry hacks to make
| Windows work properly. Then Microsoft will just flip your
| registry setting back anyways. Stockholm syndrome is crazy.
| whywhywhywhy wrote:
| Hope the PM in charge with the scammy copy designed to trick
| people into turning this on is happy with the boost in free users
| falling for it.
|
| My dad turned it on not knowing what it meant and it completely
| messed up his workflows and now I have to figure out how to
| safely disable it and move his files back.
|
| I will remember Microsoft causing this problem for him every time
| I think of or get asked if someone should use a Microsoft product
| or service.
| nomilk wrote:
| This work is 10x more effort than it sounds too due to how
| severely mistakes are penalised (i.e. unrecoverable files),
| necessitating extreme caution.
|
| When uploading 10k photos from macOS to Google Cloud using the
| Google Cloud macOS app, it said syncing had completed about 2
| hours earlier than my back-of-the-envelope calculations
| predicted. "Great", I thought, but was still a bit suspicious,
| so just in case, before deleting the local copy, I closed the
| Google Drive app and reopened it, and it immediately started
| syncing - there were 2k photos/videos to go (!!). That's how
| insanely easily it could be to lose precious memories due to a
| tiniest bug in cloud software.
|
| Surgical precision and extreme thoroughness are the only ways
| to approach these seemingly simple operations of moving files
| from one computer to another.
| erikpukinskis wrote:
| I wish more software companies had a core value of "every
| user created bit is sacred."
|
| Storage is cheap enough that this attitude is possible.
|
| But I guess keeping all of your designers aware of it across
| thousands of teams is too hard.
| crote wrote:
| > every user created bit is sacred
|
| They only care about the bits they can sell to advertisers.
| Actual user data is only a burden to them, and occasional
| data loss is not a big deal.
| BiteCode_dev wrote:
| As usual, user are not making them paying the price for
| being badly treated. Software companies do this because
| they can get away with it, that's it.
|
| Even on HN many people can't be arse to use Firefox, how
| could we expect anyone to avoid giants like Microsoft?
| queenkjuul wrote:
| Sadly Firefox has been utter garbage for me the last few
| months, routinely hangs for me on 3 different machines
| across two different OSes.
|
| Running out of options these days
| queenkjuul wrote:
| Wow four downvotes and no replies for stating my literal
| experience with Firefox the last few months lmao. Never
| change HN
| crazygringo wrote:
| Honestly, the Google Drive for Desktop app was extremely
| reliable when Google was managing the files.
|
| Then when macOS provided native support for cloud
| filesystems, it migrated to that. And it's been a complete
| mess. Uploads often don't get triggered until you restart the
| system, exactly what you're describing.
|
| I'm pretty sure they're Apple macOS bugs, not Google ones.
| Because those kinds of bugs are constant across everything
| iCloud and Mac, but I don't generally see them on Google-only
| stuff.
| vladvasiliu wrote:
| > when macOS provided native support for cloud filesystems
|
| When was that? I haven't regularly used a Mac in a good
| four years. At the time I had the Google Drive app with a
| business subscription, and I don't think there was any
| other option. It was terrible, to the point I completely
| gave up on it. Just like the other poster says, it would
| say, "I'm all synced up", but only half my files would be
| synced. I'd need to restart it to get syncing again. When I
| would try to get a large amount of files from the cloud to
| local storage, it would randomly crap out.
|
| Basically, it would stall very often, and this was on wired
| gigabit ethernet, not some spotty mobile connection from a
| phone via wifi in a crowded cafe.
| crazygringo wrote:
| May 2022:
|
| https://support.google.com/a/answer/13067413
|
| Apple calls it File Provider.
|
| I've been using the Google Drive for Desktop file
| streaming version since it launched in 2017 (file
| streaming, not exactly sync), I think it was originally
| called Google DriveFS, and never had any problems until
| they switched to Apple's File Provider.
|
| There's a different Drive app that only did sync, I think
| that's what you're talking about. It's much older. Then
| they got merged into the current one.
| Jach wrote:
| How many people who owned iPods had their music collection
| deleted by iTunes? Apple software not caring about the
| user's bits doesn't seem new...
| smileson2 wrote:
| Face the facts your dad isn't as important as KPIs tied to one
| drive and 365 subscription numbers, don't blame the PM for
| making Microsoft money lol
|
| It's not even something you have to "fix" just pay and enjoy
| bonoboTP wrote:
| It seems that after the 90s/00s MS hate, there was a period
| where MS was seen as the good guys, and "this isn't the same
| MS" etc. Seems to be turning around again.
| happymellon wrote:
| I never got the "this isn't the same Microsoft" talk.
| Usually used to shut down anyone's complaints about bad or
| deceptive behaviour. Not the same Microsoft, so this time
| must be a mistake!
|
| Except they were still claiming to love Linux whilst paying
| off government officials to hurt adoption amongst other
| deceptive behaviour.
| hulitu wrote:
| > there was a period where MS was seen as the good guys
|
| Some people are really naive.
| userbinator wrote:
| There was a period when they were as hostile to Linux and
| non-Windows as a competitor would naturally be, but they
| were not hostile to users.
|
| Try Windows 98/2K in a VM and see how peaceful the
| Windows experience used to be.
| ndiddy wrote:
| Doing shady stuff to juice KPIs seems like standard operating
| procedure at Microsoft. My favorite example of this is a few
| years after Windows Phone came out (when it was already clear
| it was going to be a failure), Microsoft announced they would
| be paying developers $100 per app (up to 20 apps) for ANYTHING
| submitted to the Windows Phone store. Clearly some executive
| was being graded on "number of apps in the store". As expected,
| this resulted in Windows Phone having a wide and varied
| selection of apps as long as all you needed was Chuck Norris
| jokes, fart apps, soundboards, whack-a-mole, Simon, etc.
| aldebran wrote:
| HN seems to think PMs have a lot more power at Microsoft or
| large corps than they actually do. I assure you, a bunch of
| this stuff just comes top down because some VP's million dollar
| bonus rides on it.
| OptionOfT wrote:
| The mandate to implement these kind of pop-ups doesn't come
| from above.
|
| The mandate to identify ways to increase profit comes from
| above, and it is the PMs (through
| marketing/research/developers) that come up with ways to
| satisfy these requirements.
|
| And failure to meet these requirements means a bad review and
| a chance of being laid off.
| mihaaly wrote:
| I wish they gave more attention to the many bugs.
|
| One is the many many years old renaming trouble, renaming a
| file in Windows Explorer inside the OneDrive sometimes select
| all while I am alread typing extension to the end of the file
| name, clearing everything with the following keystroke, either
| resulting in something stupid saved on Enter if I do not
| realise what is happening (and being mad not remembering what
| the original name was), or just have to cancel and restart the
| renaming. Very frequent and annoying.
|
| But a ... lets call it funny, so a funny trouble I recently
| discovered is that file name completely fine with Wndows is
| incompatible with OneDrive, OneDriva mandates me to "change the
| filename! change it!" (with different words but the same tone).
| What the f! Microsoft is not compatible with itself? : D What a
| clusterfuck. It is fairly new, I believe there are spaces in
| fron of the file name that is generated with some software I am
| trying, I don't care that much, nonessential, but very comedic.
| I have too much difficulty with using Windows to care with all
| the trouble and spend any time on those, I work around those, I
| increasingly give no f. (my work mandates Windows, ah!)
|
| I also seen some sort of message box when a certain software
| tried to automatically open a newly created file in OneDrive,
| something like this: "The file
| http://sharepoint.blablabl/bla/bla/newly_created_file.ext"
| cannot be found. Whaaaat?! I work with a desktiop only
| software, it does not even care about internet connection.
| Saving the file to an ordinary folder works great, opens
| automatically. Sounds like at some point querying the full path
| of the file produces an internet address? Again, I give no sh
| _t to this cr_ p that much to go ino and investigate and
| diagnose this hundredths of bug, just to have fruitless
| conversation a very understanding and very useless support guy
| or a forum audience suggesting how should I wrap my life around
| the stupidity of Windows.
| hulitu wrote:
| > I wish they gave more attention to the many bugs.
|
| We all wish that. But if you look at their responses, when
| people report bugs, tough times. They. Don't. Give. A. Shit.
| JohnTHaller wrote:
| A family friend upgraded to Windows 11 and had it helpfully
| turned on personal files being OneDrive enabled. It ate up her
| free space and suddenly she couldn't receive or reply to email
| anymore. She was nearly 80 and had no idea why until she had
| randomly asked me to help her with something on her computer.
|
| This is an instance of Microsoft being evil.
| robin_reala wrote:
| I get absurdly annoyed at "Maybe later" buttons. No, go away,
| never come back, I'm genuinely not interested.
| quadrifoliate wrote:
| In my opinion, "Maybe Later" buttons are actually useful _if
| implemented for the user 's benefit_. For example, maybe I _do_
| want to hear about OneDrive but I don 't have time now. It's a
| reasonable middle ground between Yes and No.
|
| But the problem is that modern tech companies are using it as a
| dark pattern to completely eliminate the No option. Sadly, I
| think this just might need to be regulated out. I don't see any
| reason why there _shouldn '_ be a regulation that a "Maybe
| Later" button can't appear in a prompt as the only alternative
| to Yes, there needs to be a No/Never option as well.
| Viliam1234 wrote:
| Exactly. I wouldn't mind having _three_ options: "Yes",
| "Maybe Later", and "No". It's the missing third option that
| sucks.
|
| Like in Android: Do you want to back up your photos to the
| cloud? "Yes" or "Maybe later" which means being asked every
| week. Also, the checkbox is selected by default, and if you
| close the dialog by accidentally clicking outside of it
| (maybe because you were already going to click on something
| else, and the dialog opened in the last millisecond) that by
| Google standards counts as consent.
|
| Of course, turning on the backup of photos in clouds only
| requires a single click (or misclick), but turning it off
| requires following a long tutorial very carefully...
| 1718627440 wrote:
| The classic implementation for this is Yes and No buttons and
| then a checkbox to remember the selection.
| layer8 wrote:
| Besides serving as a dark pattern, it also relieves devs from
| having ti store and check a user preference. You know, mutable
| state is bad, including user preferences. ;)
| zb3 wrote:
| Everytime I see "maybe later" without the "no, never" option I
| want to slap the person who did this in the face.
| PeterStuer wrote:
| These are the reasons people are leaving Windows. Give it 2 more
| iterations of Steam OS and "Home" will see a no longer negliable
| decline.
| proactivesvcs wrote:
| Last time I tried to restore a file from a customer's onedrive it
| just failed with a variety of 500 errors or just blank pages. The
| reason I was trying to restore it was because windows had moved
| all of their files into onedrive without their informed consent
| and (at least) this one was no longer accessible.
|
| onedrive is not a backup: like all automatic sync systems it is a
| liability. It may be useful but it is still a liability.
| jacquesm wrote:
| And more importantly: it's not yours.
| lelandfe wrote:
| Reminds me of the iOS Gmail app. You click a link and a sheet
| appears to select a browser: Safari, Download Chrome, or System
| Default.
|
| There's a checkbox, but instead of "Remember my choice" it is
| "Ask every time." Diabolical.
| 8cvor6j844qw_d6 wrote:
| OneDrive has a pretty annoying interaction with Microsoft Office-
| PDF exports (not print to PDF).
|
| If you export a PDF to a OneDrive folder, Office (especially
| Word) will instead create this file onto OneDrive itself (not
| local).
|
| Its a 50/50 chance that your local OneDrive will sync it properly
| especially if you're in a fast workflow (e.g., preparing for a
| meeting soon with minor amendments) or you wait for several
| minutes for it to sync or you logon to OneDrive web to get
| manually download the file.
|
| You pretty much have to export to a non-OneDrive synced folder
| for PDF export to work on local reliably.
| jmward01 wrote:
| I turn off every 'to cloud' option I can find on any device I
| have. Apple's iCloud is just as evil. I have turned that off so
| many times over the years it makes me angry. It is clear that
| these companies push 'cloud' in general as a dark pattern to lock
| you in and harvest your data and actions. Even if they don't
| train directly, the metadata of usage is all there and I find it
| hard to believe they don't harvest every bit they can. We need
| laws and protections that require cloud independence similar to
| the browser wars. If you have a 'cloud' offering baked into your
| OS then it must be a competitive market offering. You should also
| be able to easily migrate to different cloud offerings.
| lambdaone wrote:
| At this point, Windows has jumped the shark. It's clear Microsoft
| now see the future of their company as cloud services, with the
| desktop gateways just as an endpoint for that, and the
| progressive enshittification of the Microsoft ecosystem has
| reached the point at which it is no longer the sensible OS for
| the mainstream, but is now a gamified mess like pay-to-play
| gaming.
|
| Fortunately for most of us, Linux and MacOS exist. But companies
| that have built their entire IT infrastructure on Windows really
| have no clear way out other than to follow Microsoft down the
| rabbit hole - which is, of course, the whole point of these
| recent changes.
| georgeburdell wrote:
| I recently was forced to get Windows 11 because my new build's
| motherboard only supported UEFI and there was some
| incompatibility with my 10 year old Windows 10 boot disk. Windows
| 11 is an abomination; I paid $200 for a Pro license and I still
| get ads. My kids will be learning computing on Linux.
| vee-kay wrote:
| No ads still on Win10, thankfully.
|
| That Win11 is not an OS, it is an advertisement billboard.
| bigyabai wrote:
| It's pretty horrible. When I use Windows, my foremost reaction
| is "how can they expect _me_ to put up with this? " before
| walking away in disgust. I get offended, and I'm a sysadmin
| professionally.
|
| Then I remember, in a moment of Eldritch revelation, my _mom_
| daily-drives this OS. My siblings and cousins probably use it
| at work. Billions of people around the world chafe through
| these lockscreen ads, "live tile" updates, OneDrive nags,
| Windows + G Xbox Game Bar (whatever the _fuck_ that is),
| Cortana... it 's baffling. The same thing runs through my head
| looking at recent macOS screenshots. Are geriatrics _really_
| expected to put up with _all this_ theatrical nonsense? Is this
| subscription service racket _really_ more attractive than
| trying to compete as a normal desktop?
|
| Been using Linux for six years now. I cannot remember a single
| time I've truly missed Windows or macOS.
| jasonfarnon wrote:
| "Are geriatrics really expected to put up with all this
| theatrical nonsense"
|
| reminds of circa 2000 watching all the new Internet users
| struggling with the multiple/cascade pop-ups on websites.
| That's what's so odious about the situation now: The OS bears
| the same relationship to the user as those spammy websites.
|
| speaking of "geriatrics" I wonder if the youth are actually
| responsible for a lot of this, unintentionally. this constant
| line between corporations and my device reminds me mainly of
| the smartphone experience. And, I'm told, modern videogames.
| Older folks like me tend to thnk of their desktop OS as
| inviolate--too many decades when a program phoning home on
| its own without my permission meant virus or other grave
| problem. Maybe people who grow up with smartphones don't have
| this boundary. Msft would know this.
| chasing0entropy wrote:
| It baffles me how many people on HN cannot operate with a simple
| deny-all firewall. The windows version and updates I install are
| the only updates installed. The files I back up are the only
| files that back up. Nothing can connect to the internet. Not
| Windows Update, Not google chrome update, Not onedrive, Nor any
| virus or malware program.
|
| Reliance on the internet is the problem. No windows version
| including windows 11 REQUIRES the internet to operate. Install
| your OS from disk. Activate by phone(or don't bother...). Install
| seasoned updates from catalog. If the program wont specify the
| ports and servers it uses, DON'T USE IT AND DONT WRITE CODE FOR
| IT.
| kstrauser wrote:
| Eh, lots of us use Little Snitch or the equivalent. But I
| confess that seems like victim blaming to me. Users shouldn't
| be expected to watch their freaking OS vendor like a hawk.
| That's the one vendor you kind of have to trust: if they're
| lying to you about what they're doing, all bets are off.
|
| This to me sounds like "I check my tire pressure every 8 miles
| because I don't want them to explode catastrophically like they
| do for other people. Everyone should be doing this!" No. No,
| everyone should not _have_ to do this.
| nomilk wrote:
| > seems like victim blaming to me
|
| I admit to being in the category OP speaks of; i.e. would
| love control over what programs can access over the internet,
| but haven't the slightest clue how to set it up and manage it
| day to day.
| nomilk wrote:
| > It baffles me how many people on HN cannot operate with a
| simple deny-all firewall
|
| What is the barrier IYO, is it that awareness (or technical
| knowledge) just isn't there, or that installing isn't the issue
| but doing day to day work with a restrictive firewall becomes
| an inconvenience?
| eptcyka wrote:
| I do not believe it is reasonable to use an OS where you need
| to do hostage negotiation on a daily basis. If you need to go
| this far, what will you do when an MS update adds a bypass for
| the firewall you're using?
| Telaneo wrote:
| > I do not believe it is reasonable to use an OS where you
| need to do hostage negotiation on a daily basis.
|
| So much this. It's not that technically minded people can't
| figure out how to florb the nerfwedge. It's that it shouldn't
| be needed to begin with, and you have to know about it to
| begin with (which usually happens by getting burned by not
| doing it, either with one's own machine, or a friend's or
| family member's machine).
| olyjohn wrote:
| Maybe just don't use Windows and dont write code for it... and
| especially don't give them $200 for the Pro version, because
| that is nothing but a signal that you're willing to keep
| letting him fuck you while you write them a check.
| aboringusername wrote:
| I've often wondered if there is a way you can be malicious with
| this, a way of 'beating' them at their own game.
|
| 1: Make random files full of absolute garbage data
|
| 2: Upload 5GB of garbage data, delete (free limit capacity)
|
| 3: Repeat 1 and 2, forever, 24/7.
|
| At 10mbps it would take 68.3 minutes, at 50mbps it would take
| 13.7 minutes to upload 5gb.
|
| At 10mbps you could upload 5gb 7665 times, at 50mbps 38,325 times
| a year.
|
| that works out to 38,325gb/10mbps and 191,625 GB at 50mbps per
| year
|
| So yeah, if Microsoft wants to allow a user to upload 10's of
| thousands of completely worthless useless bytes of data and
| delete and reupload why not?
|
| Anyone care to think how many hard drives you could destroy with
| the constant writing? And you could also automate downloads too,
| so they have to deal with reads.
|
| Let's see how long they want your 'data' for then ey?
|
| Consider it a digital form of 'fly tipping' and it's completely
| free, legal and they have begged you to do it!
| cute_boi wrote:
| i guess they will ban those type of account and the user may
| not even be able to log in...
| rolph wrote:
| i think thats the idea.
| ryandrake wrote:
| This is the worst part of modern computing: Companies trying to
| get you to do things (or trick you into doing them, or worst:
| forcing you to do them as a condition of using the product). What
| ever happened to the user being in charge and deciding what to do
| with his computer? These dark patterns are getting so tiring.
| Companies need to butt out and _offer_ features, not coerce
| people into using them.
| lisper wrote:
| It's the same with Apple OS updates. I hardly ever want to update
| my Apple devices. The odds that such an update will actually
| improve my UX are indistinguishable from zero nowadays, and the
| odds that it will break something that I rely on are very nearly
| 1. (And yes, I get that I'm not getting security updates. That's
| a risk that I'm wiling to take in order to have an otherwise
| stable system.) And yet, I cannot get my Apple devices to stop
| nagging me.
| jacquesm wrote:
| More files to train the AI on ;)
|
| Seriously though: kick the habit, just move off Windows, the
| longer you stay in the harder it is to get out.
| tombert wrote:
| I just want to rant a bit about Microsoft right now.
|
| A few weeks ago, Microsoft decided to auto-update my mom's
| computer to Windows 11, and delightfully the computer no longer
| booted. Even after a litany of different boot keystrokes and
| automatic repairs and attempted recoveries, it would not boot. I
| _think_ it has something to do with the utter incompetence of the
| Windows automatic update process not correctly updating keys to
| satisfy UEFI but I am not sure.
|
| Of course my parents being my parents, there were tons of
| precious documents that were not backed up anywhere else, so we
| needed to get them off before doing anything nuclear. After
| awhile, I was able to talk my dad through flashing an Ubuntu
| image and I was able to get a live USB going (because as far as I
| am aware there isn't a legitimate way to do a live USB with
| Windows), and from there he read me a tmate URL and I was able to
| mount the drive and rsync all the data to my server.
|
| With many, many failed attempts at trying to convince them to
| install Linux Mint, I eventually walked them through flashing a
| USB drive with Windows 11, and we were able to nuke the drive and
| install Windows 11, which seems to be working, so I guess all's
| well that ends well, but not really. Key point here, before
| anyone says anything, the laptop is a bit old but it seems to be
| able to run Windows 11 just fine, it's just the automatic update
| that broke it.
|
| You might be saying "live and let live, if they're happy with
| Windows then stop trying to force them to use Linux", and to that
| I would say "it's not just about them". When something breaks on
| their computer, it's expected that I am the one who fixes it.
| Microsoft, a for-profit trillion-dollar corporation, is so
| utterly bad at their main job that they actively broke my
| mother's computer with an automatic update that she couldn't
| easily opt out of for an operating system she didn't want, and if
| she didn't have a son who was a software engineer she would have
| been forced to buy a new computer. For all I know, another
| Windows 11 auto update will come in two weeks and break the
| computer, and I will be stuck going through this nonsense yet
| again, because I love my parents and I want to help them out.
|
| If anyone from Microsoft is reading this, especially if you work
| on the automatic update or the Windows 11 team, I'm afraid that I
| have to say that I actively dislike you. You've cost me many days
| of effort because ultimately I think you are extremely bad at
| your jobs and you should consider doing literally anything else.
| 9x39 wrote:
| Been there - I help a lot of older folks with their business
| computers.
|
| The desire to make Windows an appliance falls flat when older
| PCs get on that auto-update treadmill.
|
| For example, Windows now comes OEM with Bitlocker drive
| encryption enabled. Good in theory - when you toss/donate/sell
| your old PC, normies don't think about their personal lives and
| banking details being available, so that's good. However, they
| almost never get backups working right, and this cripples
| anyone from rescuing them from a drive failure in a critical PC
| that has their entire business books on it. This is not
| uncommon.
|
| I think it's the unfortunate result of different PMs for
| different features strong-arming things on, but at different
| paces and maturity levels, and the result is Windows isn't safe
| to trust for the non-technical user.
|
| My checklist these days when I end up assuming responsibility
| for someone: Drive encryption off, Passwords into a manager,
| Backups set, Updates disabled, Remote access installed.
| tombert wrote:
| The fact that it's 2025 and there's no legitimate way to run
| a live USB with Windows baffles me.
|
| In the case of my mom's computer rescue, as far as I can
| tell, literally the only legal way to recover my mom's
| Windows NTFS drive contents was _to use Linux_. I _had to use
| Linux_ to fix Microsoft 's incompetence.
|
| I am quite confident that my mom would mostly be fine with
| Linux Mint on this computer; 99% of what she does on the
| computer is use Chrome, which works fine on Linux. Hell,
| _Edge_ works fine on Linux now if you want to stay in the
| Microsoft ecosystem. The only blocker now is that I am
| positive that she will not use a computer unless it can run
| Microsoft Office directly on the computer, and I have not
| been successful getting Office 2016 or Office 365 running on
| Linux with Wine or Proton in my attempts.
|
| Maybe for Christmas I will buy my mom a Macbook or something.
| Then she'll be forced to move to something better.
| 9x39 wrote:
| Yeah, Proton and Wine seem perfect for gaming, but I have
| never seen someone get Office right. That might be an
| audience difference or perhaps MS deliberately frustrates
| that attempt.
|
| You could try 11 IOT LTSC[1] which is super-stripped down
| like an appliance. Set a few GPOs, get her files synced,
| set remote access. You could even do something like
| DeepFreeze if she's prone to clicking on the wrong thing.
| Restricting her to running Chrome and Office with Applocker
| is a possibility for her safety - I have literally
| interrupted scammers "from Microsoft" on the phone with the
| elderly and naive.
|
| https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/evalcenter/evaluate-
| windows-...
| tombert wrote:
| I'm not sure my mom even does anything that the browser
| Office won't do; she uses Excel heavily but she's not
| using any advanced formulas or VBA or anything, and her
| use of Microsoft Word is generally using pretty basic
| formatting. Honestly I don't think that she does anything
| that can't easily be handled by Google Drive or
| OnlyOffice. That doesn't matter though; the web browser
| is a complete non-starter, and if it doesn't have the
| Microsoft Office branding she doesn't want to go for it.
|
| This didn't used to bother me much, until Microsoft
| decided it would be best to brick her computer because
| the people who run Windows Update don't know what they're
| doing. The _one job_ of Windows Update is to not break
| shit, and they 've proven incapable of that. Whomever
| works on it should be embarrassed for working on one of
| the most consistently hated pieces of technology know to
| humanity.
|
| I thought about using one of those appliance releases of
| Windows, but I also don't really want to LARP as a
| Windows Sysadmin, especially since I don't even have a
| Windows computer in my house. If I were to somehow
| convince her to use Linux, there would be "security via
| ignorance"; she doesn't know anything about how to use
| Linux so she wouldn't do much outside of the easy,
| relatively safe path, and if she did break it then it
| would be much easier for me to log in and fix it with
| tmate or Tailscale + SSH.
| 9x39 wrote:
| If she insists on Office and won't try Google Drive,
| perhaps you could experiment with setting up Office in a
| Chrome PWA for her and sidestep Windows?
| queenkjuul wrote:
| Try out WinBoat. It seems to work really well for Office.
| Runs it in a Windows docker container so no Proton or
| libvirt stuff to fiddle with.
| tombert wrote:
| Interesting. I haven't heard about that one, I'll give a
| try today.
|
| ETA
|
| I installed it, and it works remarkably well. I'll try
| pitching it to my parents.
| stefanka wrote:
| After the upgrade (which I even don't remember allowing), I had
| double UEFI entries. Cost me nearly a day to be able to boot
| windows (and it works only from the Linux boot menu)
| keyringlight wrote:
| On a tangent, one thing I wonder about for the future is all
| the people doing bypasses on the CPU requirements will at some
| point in the future be left high and dry. There's already been
| one win11 update where they started to need the popcnt
| extension that started showing up in CPUs after roughly 2008,
| raising the hard requirement from anything that's x64 although
| still below the official reqs. The scenario I wonder about is
| how many well meaning upgrades have been done to keep people on
| a supported version of windows, but MS can either update so the
| hard requirement matches official and leaves a lot unbootable,
| or detect it's actually unsupported and at that point refuse to
| update (I guess at that point you need another campaign such as
| "end of win11 25h2" to raise awareness of service pack levels
| subdividing the major OS version) while MS can point to "well,
| we never supported them anyway" as though that fixes the
| problem.
|
| I'm struggling to think of a way out that doesn't involve
| forcefully educating users or MS needing to maintain a low
| requirements/long term support branch of windows forever
| tombert wrote:
| In my case, I was able to install a vanilla Windows 11 ISO
| with a flash drive, downloaded directly from Microsoft, so
| it's not like I was bypassing any CPU checks. All I had to do
| was muck about a bit in the BIOS/EFI to tell it to boot from
| the flash drive.
|
| Part of the reason I like Linux, despite its occasional
| headaches, is how willing they are to keep supporting old
| computers. There are lots of distros that are lightweight
| while still being modern. Oh, and it won't automatically
| install an update and brick the computer, and even if I did I
| could use a modern filesystem that supports proper snapshots
| instead and recover, instead of something from 1993 that
| doesn't have any modern features.
|
| I didn't hate Windows this much until a few weeks ago. I'm
| very annoyed.
| cute_boi wrote:
| These small paper cuts are the reason i had to choose linux and
| for 4-5 years, i haven't faced that much trouble.
| 9x39 wrote:
| At this point, the OS is mostly on autopilot for home users, and
| I'm not sure that's a bad thing - Google defaults to saving
| everything in a cloud, and the experience of Google Drive is
| pretty similar.
|
| The corporate user and the power user are expected to use group
| policy to control their OneDrive, and they do. You can also sort-
| of force turn it and other components off with their App Locker
| system.
|
| The home user probably should just allow it? If you want to plant
| a flag in the ground and say, no, the computer is mine and it
| shall obey, I can't argue on that ground except to say
| indifference among consumers outnumbers you. We accept less than
| total control in phones, cars, refrigerators...
|
| I do a fair bit of pro bono help with small businesses and older
| people and the expectation that your computer should just save
| your stuff is pretty strong. Perhaps it was trained it by non-
| free software, but I think MS product managers are correct in
| betting people want Windows to be batteries included when it
| comes to saving peoples stuff.
|
| Again, the power user has control, you just have to exercise it.
| tavavex wrote:
| Why did we universally decide that this stuff is okay to do for
| businesses? Is it just because it's legal? Imagine if agreeing to
| things anywhere else in the real world worked the same way it
| does with Microsoft.
|
| Hi there, would you like me to come in and talk about my religion
| and what types of nonbelievers deserve to be tortured for
| eternity? No? Okay, sounds good. I'll just plaster these signs
| and posters all over your property, so if you change your mind,
| you'll immediately know where to go. You'll only see them once a
| day, every time you exit your house! Also, for your own
| convenience, we'll be watching your front door, and every time
| you reenter your house we'll be nullifying your past response, so
| you'll just have to tell no to our faces again.
|
| Hey, I really wanna do this thing with you, do you consent to it?
| You don't? You say you don't want to see me ever again? Okay,
| okay, chill out. But in case if you change your mind, I'll be
| asking you again every day of your life. It's for your own sake.
| Also, one day, I might see the smile on your face and just
| "assume" you'd definitely agree. But don't worry, that's just a
| minor, accidental, technical mishap! I'm committed to helping you
| and enriching your life. I care about you, don't you see.
| jim_lawless wrote:
| I asked ChatGPT to write a Windows GUI C program that looks for a
| running instance of the onedrive EXE at regular intervals and
| terminates it while keeping a running log of the attempts in a
| scrolling window. It took a few iterations to get what I wanted
| and it was simple to compile with GCC.
|
| You can use a Powershell to see if onedrive.exe is running and
| kill it with the -force option to do something similar ( ps *
| onedrive * | kill -force ) with no spaces between the asterisks
| and the word onedrive, but that turned out to be a little heavier
| to have running continuously than I wanted.
|
| If you use a process like this, you absolutely need to run it at
| intervals because the onedrive exe seems to execute at regular
| intervals.
| hereme888 wrote:
| Why not just uninstall it via powershell scripts like those
| available from privacy.sexy?
|
| I gutted OneDrive so hard it will likely never come back.
| blibble wrote:
| it'll come back in the next windows update
| 9x39 wrote:
| Hopefully everyone uses an Enterprise SKU of Windows so you can
| just control it with Group Policy.
|
| On Enterprise, you can use its built-in App Locker features to
| block the execution of any Windows component. I've used it to
| block Windows Update completely at home after it filled my
| drive to the last byte and I was sick of my gaming box
| disobeying.
| dmitrygr wrote:
| This will wreck havoc on your battery life, consider instead
| replacing onedrive.exe with a dummy executable and then using
| NTFS ACLs to deny "TrustedInstaller" permission to modify it
| buybackoff wrote:
| I wonder if most complaints are about pre-installed OEM Windows
| Home (the one with Candy Crush and 10s of other crap, including
| from a vendor) and bundled crappy cut-off OneDrive? I have
| Windows Pro and Office 365 Family option (5 accounts, full Office
| and 1TB OneDrive each). Most user-hidden Windows settings are in
| Group Policy Editor, or registry still works. OneDrive proper has
| toggles for every folder (Desktop, Documents, Puctures) discussed
| in the post.
|
| After I lost 8 months of photos with a phone ~10 years ago, being
| sure it was all backed to Google Photos, I would rather trust
| Microsoft, than risk losing data, and now backup to both clouds.
| The paid Office+OneDrive is great value.
|
| It just works. Yes, defaults are annoying, but could be changed.
| I recently enabled a blocked-by-default outgoing firewall, and I
| have much more questions to JetBrains Rider trying to ignore my
| system DNS setting and so to bypass Pi-Hole multiple times per
| minute, than to Microsoft.
| 9x39 wrote:
| That is probably the case, but Windows has always been
| schizophrenic when it comes to settings - there's the UI, the
| control panel, the second new control panel, the cli, group
| policy, the registry...
|
| Frame it as "it's 2025 and this is my first look at Windows",
| it's pretty bad, and it sucks because if they installed on a
| Home SKU, we end up having to tell them to reinstall to get
| control.
|
| Maybe we have Stockholm syndrome.
| buybackoff wrote:
| Microsoft is notoriously bad with naming. In this case likely
| intentionally. The SKUs: Home = Crap, Pro = OKish Windows,
| Enterprise = Pro. But people who do not care about lack of
| RDP server, Hyper-V, BitLocker do not care about the rest,
| probably. Then confusion araises from "first look at Windows"
| by pro users.
| lutusp wrote:
| > "What if I just don't want OneDrive? Microsoft has embedded it
| so deep into Windows that there are no easy ways of getting rid
| of it."
|
| This is not so, at least for the present. In current Windows
| releases, go to "Control Panel," then "Programs and Features",
| then _select and uninstall OneDrive_. If it 's not installed, it
| cannot run.
|
| Before you do this, make sure you have moved all your files from
| OneDrive to your local storage devices.
|
| In the future, Microsoft will doubtless make OneDrive mandatory,
| along with requiring everyone to have a Microsoft account and
| watch their ads 24/7. But there's a remedy for that too --
| install Linux. "Yet another European government is ditching
| Microsoft for Linux" : https://www.zdnet.com/article/the-german-
| state-schleswig-hol...
| crazygringo wrote:
| There are few things that irritate me more than the gradual
| replacing of "Yes / No" with "Yes / Maybe later".
|
| It's so disrespectful, infantilizing, and paternalistic.
|
| But you see it everywhere now -- Microsoft, Apple, mainstream
| respected news and media sites constantly asking if you want to
| use their app instead of their site, or upgrade your plan.
|
| And I don't understand _why_. It 's hard to believe it increases
| conversion. But it does make people like me angry at the brand.
| Telaneo wrote:
| > It's hard to believe it increases conversion.
|
| It isn't for me. I see people being converted just to stop the
| nagging, or just doing it on auto-pilot. It worries me, but it
| makes it pretty obvious why the corps aren't asking for proper
| consent. They don't care, they don't need to, and it's clearly
| working.
| crazygringo wrote:
| What I'm saying is, if they're going to nag you _anyways_ ,
| "yes/maybe later" doesn't obviously seem more likely to get
| people to click yes than "yes/no". In response to e.g. "Do
| you want to enable x right now?"
|
| I believe nagging increases conversion. I'm just taking about
| the obnoxious "maybe later" wording.
| mrandish wrote:
| What makes this even worse is that MSFT doesn't just do it with
| their "free", subsidized or bundled versions. They also do it to
| users who are using the full paid versions of the OS and Office.
| I paid an extra hundred dollars to get Windows Pro pre-installed
| on my laptop and a key reason I did so was to avoid this crap.
| But they still have all the same upsells and dark patterns.
|
| All Windows Pro gives me is the very complex enterprise policy
| manager with its thousands of options but all the upsell nags,
| user privacy and other "good for MSFT monetization" options are
| still defaulted on in Windows Pro. And these options are buried
| deep in separate tree nodes. It's the same dark pattern Facebook
| uses around privacy settings. Whenever they _have_ to provide
| privacy options that allow opting out they adopt "malicious
| compliance" and over do it in as granular and complex a way as
| possible - with no "opt out of everything" macro option.
|
| Now I know that I can change all the policy manager options in
| the registry editor too, and frankly, it's not really much more
| complex. A couple years ago I realized I make so many changes
| fixing a new Windows install to be livable and useful that I'd
| never remember them all. So every time I make a registry change
| to fix something, I store a registry script that'll make the edit
| automatically in dedicated folder on my server (it's easy to
| export a single registry key as a script). As of today there are
| over a hundred scripts there. I'm getting to the point where I'm
| probably going to switch to Linux soon. Which sucks because I
| used to really _like_ Windows (with a few notable exceptions
| which can be addressed with fixes and helper apps). But the level
| of work required to keep Windows usable and useful has
| skyrocketed in recent years. Before I was just dealing with
| occasional random bugs, regressions and feature oversights by a
| generally well intentioned OS vendor. Now I 'm fighting a rapidly
| escalating battle against a malicious opponent. It's so dumb
| because I'd actually pay $100/yr for a "Power Windows" version
| with no ads, upsells, agenda promotions, dark patterns and a full
| restoration of all the power user features they keep dropping
| from Windows 11 (like advanced taskbar functionality).
| 9x39 wrote:
| I hear where you're coming from. The corporate shops customize
| fleets with group policy and InTune, and it's a hassle to do
| the same one-off at home.
|
| You might get traction with trying the IOT LTSC versions, which
| are often very stripped down. Used to be LTSB, then LTSC, but
| now on 11 I think you need to opt for IOT LTSC which is
| different than just LTSC.
|
| IOT LTSC will have half the processes out of the box and less
| bullshit that you hate. It's possible apps that do OS checks
| will grump at you - Adobe Lightroom for example comes to mind,
| but it's an idea.
| mrandish wrote:
| Thanks for the suggestion. I'll put it on the list for when
| I'm next forced to reinstall. That's when I'll take a hard
| look at how well I can replicate the Windows experience (back
| when it was still good) on Linux.
| goda90 wrote:
| My work decided OneDrive is how we'd do files. One of the worst
| parts is that it makes the recently changed files section of
| Explorer basically worthless.
| foofoo12 wrote:
| At least be thankful you can say "no" more than three times.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45551504
| quantumwoke wrote:
| I will never trust OneDrive with any files after it silently
| deleted thousands of my files while syncing - I hit the hidden
| maximum number of files limit and then it permanently deleted the
| remaining files with no warning.
| rs186 wrote:
| I just turn off notifications for OneDrive which ... works quite
| well so far. At least system notifications work as expected, and
| Microsoft has not (yet) allowed OneDrive to ignore system
| settings for now.
| Derbasti wrote:
| Here's your reminder that you can uninstall OneDrive in Europe.
| djoldman wrote:
| The OTA car updates, the OS's doing stuff we don't want, the ads
| on phones and websites, buying something on a new website knowing
| you're immediately put on an email list that you'll immediately
| unsubscribe from...
|
| It's tough being a user.
|
| Imagine being a non-tech savvy one who just has to wade through
| all that and doesn't know how to block it.
| Freedumbs wrote:
| It was really fun when the rearranged the directory structure to
| place all files under onedrive. I created a new directory
| outside, copy pasted everything, then deleted onedrive contents.
| Windows is all sorts of hell.
| a022311 wrote:
| Back when I was using Windows, I had enabled this feature too
| (before I knew much about privacy) and when I finally decided to
| get rid of it, I remember consistently failing to disable
| OneDrive. I would log out, uninstall the app and then try to move
| my Desktop folder out of "OneDrive" in my home directory and next
| boot I'd have 2 folders again (with the "OneDrive" one being
| used, of course). I ended up reinstalling for another reason, but
| that finally fixed the problem.
|
| I deleted everything from my OneDrive today and got especially
| mad that the Android app shows a download icon in folder details
| yet it's disabled. There's absolutely no way to get your files
| through there. Had to log in on the web just to get a ZIP of
| everything (it's surprising that's still possible). As soon as I
| move off Outlook I'm out of this ecosystem.
| fluidcruft wrote:
| I think OneDrive has an "oops I accidentally rm-rf /" window
| for deletions. Anyway OneDrive used to drive me nuts until
| somehow it all just clicked in some sort of "aha!" zen mode so
| I haven't had much trouble with in a long time. The biggest
| issue is often large changes will time out without error and
| you have to kick it in the pants a few times.
| a022311 wrote:
| Sorry if it wasn't clear in the original post, I meant I
| consciously deleted everything after getting sick and tired
| of the terrible UX.
|
| It's not like I was storing anything meaningful there anyway,
| I hadn't logged in for a year and I don't regret doing so. I
| also got an email for deleting many files, which I happily
| ignored.
| fluidcruft wrote:
| No I think you were clear, I was more responding that what
| you are describing sounds like when OneDrive gets stuck
| with a sync task that hasn't completed and doesn't know how
| to force to happen.
| vee-kay wrote:
| You can disable OneDrive using App locker.
|
| Applocker can help prevent users from running unwanted software
| (including DLLs and scripts).
|
| AppLocker is included with all editions of Windows except
| Windows 10 version 1809 or earlier.
|
| However, AppLocker requires Local Security Policy, which isn't
| available in Home edition of Windows, but it can be installed
| easily for free.
|
| https://www.thewindowsclub.com/local-security-policy-missing...
|
| Here's how to use AppLocker to block an unwanted app:
|
| https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/124008-use-applocker-all...
| CMay wrote:
| I can sympathize a little with Microsoft here. MS got totally
| angry and fed up with what was happening. I'm not sure how many
| people really understand how bad ransomware was getting.
| Microsoft just finally said enough is enough and started
| implementing counter-measures. Being more forceful about getting
| people to backup their files is one of them.
|
| Yes, it's annoying, and many might say what's the big deal?
| People's harddrives used to die all the time and they would still
| lose data. Why suddenly because it's ransomware, is it a bigger
| deal? I think it just adds a moral dimension to it that wasn't as
| acute before.
|
| MS took the risk to be a little bit of an asshole as a way to
| counter even bigger assholes.
|
| That's only really acceptable if they can hold up their end of
| the deal and maintain absolute privacy and security for that data
| without trying to analyze it and apply Minority Report pre-crime
| to everything.
| potwinkle wrote:
| You're anthropomorphizing the lawnmower. Microsoft didn't do
| this to help or hurt users or ransomware. There's no deeper
| meaning behind the action past improving business metrics in
| order to meet goals and please management and shareholders.
| They're not thinking about good or evil when implementing this,
| even if the PR firms they hire might make it look that way.
| nikanj wrote:
| But maybe in a week you will change your mind. Better ask you
| again in 7 days!
| narag wrote:
| So you can imagine my incredulity when a few days ago I received
| one email message telling me that if I don't take action
| urgently, my One Drive account is going to be deleted, maybe even
| my files in the cloud.
| barbs wrote:
| I've been running mostly Linux (with some macOS) as a daily
| driver for the past 15 years and have seen more and more articles
| like this pop up on HN over time. I've felt for a while that
| Linux is more user-centric, but it seems like Windows 11 is a
| whole other level of user-hostile, to the point where even
| average users seem to be catching on. My own father managed to
| set up Linux on his computer without any prompting or help, and I
| didn't even suggest it to him. It's a dual-boot setup, but he
| boots into linux nearly every time and prefers it. It's starting
| to feel like a turning point.
|
| I'm wondering if there's a market out there for helping regular
| computer users switch to linux?
| Telaneo wrote:
| > I'm wondering if there's a market out there for helping
| regular computer users switch to linux?
|
| I'm more feeling like average users are just jumping straight
| to a phone (or maybe a tablet) as their main computing
| experience, and their PC are either pushed out of their life
| completely, as their other devices can do its job while being
| less hostile, or their PC is reduced to doing only the tasks
| which are either impossible or very-very inconvenient on a
| phone or tablet (PC games, long-form writing, content creation,
| Excel, et cetera).
|
| Linux has some of these remaining niches nailed down pretty
| well, but still not well enough that the choice is obvious
| (Proton is really good, but kernel-anti-cheat is still a thing.
| Libreoffice is good for simple writing, but not for the Office
| power-user), and even then, this is really just the crumbs that
| are left after most users just exit the PC market as a whole,
| since they figured out the don't need one in the first place
| any more.
| Lapsa wrote:
| perhaps you want to turn on Windows Backup with One Drive and a
| Copilot? have you made Edge your default browser yet?
| quacked wrote:
| I deeply hate Microsoft, and most modern commercial software
| design, but OneDrive has consistently been the best app I've ever
| used for large file storage. Can anyone explain why they hate it
| so much? I have near instantaneous access to my documents on my
| computer and phone. I've been considering a move to Mint, but I
| like OneDrive so much I'm not sure that I want to lose it.
| rolph wrote:
| when you lose onedrive, what else do you lose?
|
| All Your Files Data and Media!
|
| if you want to use onedrive ok thats a choice, if its
| impossible to store locally, and you have the sword of
| deletecles hanging over your head, thats not a choice, thats a
| consequence.
| ptx wrote:
| The web version is awful, absurdly cumbersome to navigate,
| difficult to search, confusingly structured, slow and just
| generally terrible.
|
| The native version was forced onto people's Windows machines
| and automatically configured to sync people's local desktop and
| documents to Microsoft's servers without explicit consent, so
| some of the hate directed towards Onedrive might be an
| expressions of hate of Microsoft's abusive and deceptive
| behavior. But even if the Onedrive app itself is amazing (I
| don't know if it is), installing anything from such an
| untrustworthy company seems like a bad idea.
| hamdouni wrote:
| I'm fine with Tux, thank you.
| nashashmi wrote:
| Can you say you disagree to the TOS?
| everyone wrote:
| @Everyone. If you must use Windows, use Windows 10 LTSC.
| LeoPanthera wrote:
| Does big tech understand consent?
|
| [ ] Yes
|
| [ ] Maybe later
| dare944 wrote:
| Does big tech _undermine_ consent?
|
| [ ] Yes
|
| [ ] Maybe later
| al_borland wrote:
| Where I work we start using OneDrive for backup, even on macOS.
| It hijacks your Documents folders, as well as a few others. I
| suspect most people don't even realize they're using OneDrive.
|
| I've had to tell dozens of people to move their git repos to
| folders that aren't managed by OneDrive. I've seen where someone
| will change branches and OneDrive will start pulling files back
| down from the old branch. It's quite the mess.
| WhyNotHugo wrote:
| Consent is considered freely given if someone has a choice to say
| "yes" or "no", without any additional consequence.
|
| The choice to say only "yes" or "ask me again later" is closer to
| what a stalker or a psychopath offers.
| ptx wrote:
| If you confine Windows to a VM without Internet access it won't
| be able to exfiltrate your data or install unexpected new
| features. I find this to be a much better user experience.
| bn-l wrote:
| Do they train their models on what's uploaded to onedrive?
| npteljes wrote:
| These dark patterns are the zeitgeist really, for many years now.
| And they work very well, because of the combinations of vendor
| lock-in, product bundling, and companies getting better and
| better at PR.
|
| Usually there is an easy workaround. For example with One Drive
| shenanigans, you just need to save the files outside of
| Documents, Pictures etc, and that's it. I got fed up many years
| ago and moved to Linux, because I like my fights with Linux
| better. With Microsoft (and most other corporations), it's their
| way, or the highway. And it always have been.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2025-10-12 23:01 UTC)