> As Microsoft puts it: “We are continuing the exploration of badging on the Start menu with several new treatments for users logging in with local user accounts to highlight the benefits of signing in with a Microsoft account (MSA).”
What is Microsoft really thinking here? You have to go out of your way (and probably do a web search) in order to figure out how to install Win 11 without using a Microsoft Account. So those people deliberately chose that -- they didn't avoid the MSA because they were unaware of the benefits, they did it because they were aware of the drawbacks and want to avoid them.
Harassing them seems more likely to make them angry than to make them change their minds.
Companies should really accept a "No" from their users. No I don't want to use a microsoft account just to use my computer. (Without jumping through hoops) Don't ask me again the moment I say "No".
You can see the same with all those dialogs that only have "Yes, do $THING" and "Remind me later".
It's what the phrase "the customer is always right" originally meant. It means you can do all the market research, development, testing, polling, and seeding to sell a product. But the ultimate decider of whether the product is "good" is whether or not the people buy it. If your sales plan flops don't say "it's not the product's fault, I just need to do a better job marketing it." No, the product is wrong, the customer is right. Don't try to change peoples' behavior, instead change your marketing to target what people are actually buying. That could mean scrapping the project because it's unpopular, but could also mean narrowing the focus to the smaller population that really does want what you're selling.
Well, that's what it originally meant. Nowadays it's been twisted to mean reacting to every minor complaint and demand in order to retain existing customers, no matter how unreasonable or costly the effort. Rather than helping increase productivity it's become a weapon to punish subordinate sales staffs.
One thing is clear: MS doesn't really care about customer satisfaction at all. There is no single innovative thing in Windows 11 that would make me switch over. I use Windows 11 on company machines only; I don't understand why anyone would voluntarily put up with this crap.
Because Microsoft almost have a monopoly on the OS market. Pretty much the only alternative for users who aren't tech savvy enough to comfortably use Linux is to buy a Mac, which will price out a lot of people. Even if you are able to use Linux (or can afford a Mac), the popularity of Windows means that you will eventually run into a piece of software you need that isn't available for your OS and won't run in Wine, forcing you to use Windows by some other means.
There's a saying in Japanese that precisely describes this situation: 鴨が葱を背負ってくる. The literal translation is "a duck approaches you with a leek on its back." It refers to good luck brought by someone waiting to be exploited. Paying money for a product that works against you is exactly this.
It probably is, and the English name for that Pokemon is a reflection of that. How likely would duck come along carrying ingredients for stew? That’d be “far-fetched.”
>>That could mean scrapping the project because it's unpopular, but could also mean narrowing the focus to the smaller population that really does want what you're selling.
... or, keep improving the product to the point where most people actually find it useful, which is obviously an option for Microsoft, with cash reserves to fund centuries of development. Find out what the downsides are, and fix them, or offer actually compelling benefits.
Heck, I'm very hard-set against it, but I just heard about Apple starting to offer savings accts with 4.5% interest. If MS started paying that much, with trustworthy security and no upper limit, I might sign up (i.e., if you pay me enough, I might also accept your other parts of the offer).
It must be damn valuable for MS to have us have accounts, and if so, they could actually afford to provide better returns than banks, because the return to MS would be [banking profit] + [network profit].
There are several parties at this party. One is the person who bought a computer with an operating system on it; possibly they even paid for the operating system itself, though more likely they are using the operating system that came on the computer they're using. Another party is the one who bought a license from microsoft; occasionally they're the same party but more typically it is some sort of vendor who did this. And there's also the party that's giving microsoft money to put advertising in front of the "consumer."
So -- it isn't clear to me who in this context is "always right"
In the newspaper industry, the 'Customer' refers to the advertisers who pay for the ads, advertorials, sponsored content, etc that actually make the publication a viable business model.
The individual who buys and reads the newspapaper is referred to as the 'Consumer'.
If you buy a car from a dealership, then yes indeed you are "less" of a customer of the manufacturer.
Consider this relationship:
Toyota makes a car to the specifications of general motors, who brands the car as a "Pontiac Vibe" and sells the car to a Pontiac dealership. The Pontiac dealership then sells you the car at mostly a wash because you're also financing the purchase and they want to sell "your" loan to a loan bundler and reseller.
So -- everyone gets a cut, and almost nobody's actually got a direct interest in how the schlub who buys a car feels about the car.
I don't believe you've proven the point you're attempting to make.
Tesla is a rather famous example of a car manufacturer that doesn't have a dealership model. Do you imagine that GM or Toyota is somehow less interested in how their cars are either liked or disliked by their target audiences than Tesla is? That seems pretty hard to imagine.
Microsoft is selling your eyeballs to advertisers: You are the product not the customer.
Vendors are buying windows from Microsoft and installing it onto a computer and selling that computer to you. You are buying a computer not windows. If you need support you talk to the vendor, not microsoft. The vendor is the customer to Microsoft, not you.
And regarding cars -- car companies make lots of crappy cars and sell them to dealerships who have to buy them regardless of if they want them or not. The dealerships are the customers of the car companies. You are a customer of the dealership. 99% of the time if you've got a problem with the car, the manufacturer is going to be of limited use to you.
Microsoft clearly has zero interest in the idiots who buy retail licenses, especially home licenses. They'll cash your check, but they're not going to pay any attention to your opinions. You're trapped in their ecosystem and they have no reason to pay attention to your desires. They're going to sell your eyeballs to as many advertisers as possible and there's nothing you can do about it.
Except - like with the car examples above - eventually customers get pissed off or frustrated enough to switch to a different OS (or car manufacturer).
Thus Apple and Linux distro's picking up a lot of ex-windows users. KDE plays well to this audience. :)
I think valve did there part to remove one large reason to stay on windows.
I think if steam decks gets a good linux desktop, similar to windows in look and feel, that can be run on a desktop, parallel to windows. Its over, very suddenly, very brutal.
The executive in charge of that strategy, by then, will have moved on to Google.
Also, likely microsoft has realized there's zero long term revenue in operating systems -- you'll have been forced to move all your data to their Office 365 environment and will be paying them rent regardless of if you use a windows or a mac or a linux or an oracle desktop.
This seems like something we’ll get to see play out over the next few years. Given that GM has decided that they don’t care if customers want CarPlay, we’ll see if customers say “No thanks” to buying cars from GM because of that.
Users should learn to say "no" to companies. The surveillance advertising economy is not some hapless mistake that companies will suddenly wake up to one day and realize the error of their ways. Whatever Microsoft "should" do is just wishful thinking. Change will come from users or regulation, and regulation seems unlikely.
In my comments here over the years, I have occasionally mentioned how I don't do business with certain companies or use certain sorts of products because I find the companies objectionable.
What I find interesting/hilarious is how often someone will reply to me saying that my life would be so much easier if I just gave in and used them anyway, or (worse) how I'm being wrong in some way by being selective about who I support with my money.
That borg-like "you will be assimilated" sort of commentary is fascinating, disturbing, and goes far to illustrate how there are ordinary people who absolutely don't want you to exert your economic authority.
> That borg-like "you will be assimilated" sort of commentary is fascinating, disturbing, and goes far to illustrate how there are ordinary people who absolutely don't want you to exert your economic authority.
I've learned not to underestimate the extents to which people will go to rationalize their cognitive dissonance. In person, my tactic has just been to self-censor more - I guess I'm tired/lazy and don't want to be bothered unnecessarily.
>I've learned not to underestimate the extents to which people will go to rationalize their cognitive dissonance. In person, my tactic has just been to self-censor more - I guess I'm tired/lazy and don't want to be bothered unnecessarily.
I couldn't agree more. As someone with decades of infosec experience, I stopped trying to get my family members (especially those who don't have any technical background) not to use abusive products/services, especially on their smartphones years ago, because I got sick of having to hear about how wrong I was from folks who wouldn't know good security hygiene if it came up and bit them.
It just wasn't worth the argument.
As in most situations (not just tech/infosec), some lessons can't be learned from others, the mistakes must be experienced personally to actually get it. Those lessons are different for everyone, but are pretty ubiquitous. I've certainly been there myself.
It's fair enough if you don't want to make evangelism your life mission but if you don't point bad things out to people at all then you are limiting your impact as much as those that have given up and submit to those things. Sometimes people are receptive to being nudged towards responsible behavior.
>It's fair enough if you don't want to make evangelism your life mission but if you don't point bad things out to people at all then you are limiting your impact
What makes you think I don't? Check my comment history, that should disabuse you of that notion.
>Sometimes people are receptive to being nudged towards responsible behavior.
That's often true. But I've banged my head against that particular wall too many times already. You did catch the part where I said "family" right?
This assumes that consumers have a choice to say no. I can drop windows and switch to linux, but I don't think everyone could. I want a phone that doesn't come with Google's software and won't severely limit what I can do with it like apple would. Could most people find and afford one? Some surveillance companies like facebook and Experian don't give you any choice at all. They collect (and leak) your data even if you never sign up for anything with them. If I only have one option for broadband in my city it's unreasonable to expect me to go without functional internet access, even if I hate the one company available and know they'll sell my browsing history.
At a certain point people are basically forced to use companies or are at their mercy even if they'd rather not be.
> I can drop windows and switch to linux, but I don't think everyone could.
Honestly, most people could if they really wanted to. People come up with all kinds of reasons why they can't but ultimately it just boils down to not wanting to be inconvenienced.
Your other examples are a lot harder to do something about but that doesn't mean you can't do anything. Do you really need a smartphone at all? Third party data harvesting is bad and should be regulated out of existence but you can limit how much those companies affect you. Broadband does work a bit better in some parts of the world where the last mile cables are considered common infrastructure so go campaign or heck you could start your own ISP or support someone else that does. Can any single person fix all of this on their own? No. But you can resists wherver possible. You can choose better companies where they are available even if that means paying slightly more. You can get involved politically, especially locally. You can say no to services that are not really essential.
Yes. I need a smartphone. What is it with so many antiprogress people on HN? Do you really need cooked food? Like reaaaaly need it? Yes ffs... Windows with ads is a much smaller inconvenience than completely changing my work style to fit with linux lack of support of a million useful things.
Most people need a smartphone at least for google maps. Do you really believe people will go back to using paper maps for orientation? Or fixed phones?
Paper maps aren't that hard to get. Whether people will use them has no bearing on whether people can, and therefore they want the convenience of smartphones but only need verbal/paper directions when trying to get somewhere.
It's hard to say something is a "need" if it has existed for only 18 years and still has viable alternatives. That doesn't mean it should automatically be discarded, but it's disingenuous to act like it's actually necessary.
I don't think it'd be a stretch to say that many many people have died who wouldn't have if they'd only had a working cell phone on them at the time. A cell phone could very well save a person's life. It's a pretty useful thing. Increasingly, the expectation is that everyone will have one and a growing number of products and services require the use of an app. In fairness, I've personally managed to avoid those so far, but it's already at times required companies to go out of their way to provide me with alternatives and it's not hard to imagine that they will only grow more reluctant to provide those costly accommodations in the future.
I don't think it's reasonable to expect people to limit their employment options, risk their safety, and increasingly cut themselves off from normal society just to avoid the harms of owning a cell phone, when those harms are impacting everyone at little or no benefit to the public at large, and when the worst offenses could be mitigated through regulations.
vetinari:
> > No, you don't really need a smartphone. You want one. Slightly different thing. Nuance, you know.
autoexec:
> I don't think it'd be a stretch to say that many many people have died who wouldn't have if they'd only had a working cell phone on them at the time. A cell phone could very well save a person's life.
Just say no to Nestle. Cook your own food! Same goes for piracy, if they feel violated by me not being customer, dont go to the government and its laws as company. Just try to exist without the could-be-customers. Boycott the pirates, by doing nothing.
And notice how "Yes" is permanent. Once you "agree," you can never go back without starting all over again, if even then.
This is why there are no more "No" selections. The developers--from marketing to the people who ask ChatGPT to spit out the required Python code and then paste it into a GitHub repository--all have financial motivations for you to say "Yes".
This is why I think that the GDPR is such an important law not just for the things it covers but because it formalizes the notion of iformed consent for computer interactions - specifically requiring that saying no has to be as easy as saying yes.
That doesn't work in this situation. What percentage of windows users "bought the product"? Someone else bought it and put it on the computer without any user input. It's like buying a house and finding out that it has a coin-operated lock on the front door when you try to move in.
Without client conciousness clients will be fcked!
Sooner or later will be, as their agressive provider shoves more and more crap down their throat without resistance it will only make that provider more and more determined feeding even more crap for fortunes. Not being satisfied and stop. It will continue into the eternity if can. When something is forced on you that you do not want or even harmful for you then not the submitting is the answer but to push back. Be lazy or be fcked! Those are the choices. We seen it before in the history.
MS's deal with computer manufacturers makes them pay more if they want to not install Windows on all of the computers they sell. And when some decided to just sell computers, you know, unbundled, the way that maximizes consumer choice, they were framed as criminally enriching from piracy and lots of governments felt into them with all their rage.
It's not the client's fault that corrupt powerful people use violence to take down their rights.
Not the client is the responsible for others agression of course but they are for supplying those doing violents on them with their money. Of course thay are! Those doing shady business to the damage of the customer while the customer aware of this but still pay those doing violence is more than responsible: being accomplice. Don't come to me with the 'nothing can be done' kind of lazy nonsense please! That is just an excuse to remain lazy.
I'm sorry, I don't see the problem here. If you don't like Windows, don't use it; it's really that simple. If you're forced to pay more to get a computer without Windows because of bundling deals, then just buy the one that comes with Windows (because obviously, the cost of the OS is being subsidized, and then some, by all the extra bloatware added on), and then delete it and install the OS of your choice.
There's nothing forcing you to use the OS that was installed on your PC; these aren't phones where the OS is largely baked-in and can't be easily replaced or reflashed. It's quite trivial to install a different OS on a PC. People have been doing it for decades now.
If Dell/HP is able to sell you a computer for less money by bundling Windows, then obviously MS isn't making a lot of money from OS sales, but rather from other stuff, which is why all the ads are included. People want cheap, so they're getting an OS which is cheap, and paid for partly from ads. If anything, people should be happy: they can get a computer cheaper by just accepting the adware/bloatware-laden MS OS, which they can then delete and replace with Linux.
> There's nothing forcing you to use the OS that was installed on your PC; these aren't phones where the OS is largely baked-in and can't be easily replaced or reflashed. It's quite trivial to install a different OS on a PC.
Powerful people use threats of violence (the law, the police, the army) to centralize wealth and power while externalizing costs. Most of these costs are minor (such as annoyances with Windows advertising) on an individual basis but result in large profits for the powerful.
It’s a sad fact of reality but that’s how it is. You want to change things? Then you need to organize people to back your cause. But then if you succeed you become one of the powerful. And as we all know, absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Microsoft does not give their license away for free. OEMs pay for every PC they ship. The OEM licensing price is lower than the retail price but the PC buyer most assuredly paid for their copy of Windows. Microsoft just decided they needed to double dip. They make money on the front with licenses and subscriptions and on the back with advertising.
This was in response to another comment up the thread saying that the license is basically free since you can use it without activation with very few limitations (can't change the desktop background and such).
OEMs aren't paying license fees for preinstalled Windows (if they are doing that at all) because they want to support Microsoft but because their customers expect Windows to be installed. That means you still decide.
Not really. I recently bought two used tower computers, and they came with Windows preinstalled. I have no use for Windows and formatted the hard drives immediately. But nonetheless, Microsoft still got some money from me in this exchange.
Companies should be regulated to offer No as an option, and to make that option for all intents are purposes equally represented. No other way will work. Abuse makes a lot of money.
- Does every program need to support offline account? (what about MMO games?)
- Does every program need to support online account? (tongue in cheek, for people who prefer online services)
- What if I don't want to install a particular Windows update because I dislike something about it? Right now I can stay forever on an obsolete version (I assume), but that's not "equally represented" - my computer is broken now.
I think it's very hard (or borderline impossible) to do what you ask for. Even in Open Source, where choice is almost a religion, not all options are equally easy for users.
I don't think it's hard. If the software uses an online account, it should clearly say so before buying. Not just Windows, games often do this too, for example I just bought Bloons TD 6, and discovered that it didn't sync my progress over Steam cloud. Turns out I have to register, in order to be able to sync progress. Would have been nice to know beforehand.
Regarding the options I'm sure you have seen many cookie prompts. Often the Accept all is inviting, and the Reject all is smaller text, or outright hidden or unavailable. But there are cookie prompts that just have uniform buttons for Accept all, Reject all. Simple.
Now, I realize that no matter how I phrase this, it can (and would) be abused. I'm not clever enough to avoid that. But as I look at history, humans don't play nice just because. Many of the nice things that we have now all stand on regulation, which previous, bad behavior prompted. For a little example, the common charger for phones. If phone companies can be regulated into one charger standard, I'm sure we could also make software options look and behave equal.
Just FYI but on the store page Steam lists features a game has. If it does not list Steam Cloud, then it does not use Steam Cloud for save games. Bloons TD 6 does not list Steam Cloud.
> Does every program need to support offline account? (what about MMO games?)
MMOs are all about connecting to other other people, hard to do that offline. Reductio ad absurdum is not a valid argument for social issues.
I do however think that all multiplayer games should publicise their server components, at least when the operator shuts them down.
> What if I don't want to install a particular Windows update because I dislike something about it? Right now I can stay forever on an obsolete version (I assume), but that's not "equally represented" - my computer is broken now.
Security updates and bug fixes should not mean forced functionality changes, yes.
I don't think I agree that ethics are ultimately irrelevant. Regardless, though, I think you're confusing being "manipulative" with being "opinionated".
I'm 100% being opinionated. I'm not being manipulative, though, because I am not trying to make anyone do anything -- let alone trying to do it through unwarranted emotional appeals.
I profoundly resent this behaviour from the BBC app and from the people who built it. I would resent it from any party. It’s no problem to clarify that.
But to the “bad guy”. IMHO behaviour is different from identity (i.e. a focus on what people do and the effect it has, not who they are).
If the premise of your organisation is existentially predicated on scummy behaviour then that does implicate identity and maybe you are the cartoon villain “bad guy”. The developers aren’t bad guys, nor are the BBC. But they are both doing (marginally) harmful things.
But “bad guy” is also common shorthand for “guy who exhibits bad behaviour”. For some that distinction might even be splitting hairs.
Again, in order to be manipulative, I would have had to been intending to alter what someone else does. I had no such intent.
What I did was express my opinion. You seem to be arguing that expressing an opinion is a bad thing.
I'm not sure what I've said that made you so angry. The opinion I expressed was "unethical behavior is unethical regardless of who does it", which I would not have expected to be controversial.
You don't need active intent to be emotionally manipulative. Being manipulative is about control.
Your actions attempt to exert control over other people by making them acquiesce to your ethical demands, lest they want to be considered "bad guys" too. Hence the guy editing his post from his original point of empathy to something lesser.
>You seem to be arguing that expressing an opinion is a bad thing.
My main point that I haven't made clear is that individual bad or unethical actions don't make a person "good" or "bad". That's what I take exception to in your post.
That was my intent by pointing out that you could be considered a "Bad Guy" if we were to reduce people down to a single black/white moral adjective based on one of their actions.
Your recap of your comment is not controversial. It doesn't have any of the language I take exception to.
> Your actions attempt to exert control over other people by making them acquiesce to your ethical demands
I think that you might be reading a bit too much into this. That was absolutely not my intent.
> individual bad or unethical actions don't make a person "good" or "bad".
I agree. I was speaking casually, using slang that I assumed would be understood (that's why I capitalized "Bad Guy" -- to indicate that I'm not literally talking about the person being fundamentally bad).
The irony is that the reason I speak rather formally in my comments on HN is to try to minimize exactly what happened here -- having my statements misunderstood in a way that I didn't anticipate. English makes misunderstanding all too easy.
How about fucking Signal. You know, the privacy oriented app that's written by one of the supposed good guys. On iOS at least the prompt to gain access to your contacts provides two choies: Yes" "Remind me later".
One of the reasons I refuse to install the thing. Another being it no doubt it requires me to setup an account (making up personal details as I do so) like other BBC properties do. There are some things I've stopped listening to as they are not available elsewhere (or are available 28 days later but have time sensitive content). At some point, if this keep moving this way, I'll use BBC content so little that I can just disable it on all my devices and stop paying the license fee (unless by then the licensing arrangement has changed so I'm still liable to pay in that circumstance).
Interestingly the image host you link to with that screenshot refuses to remember that I don't want to install their app on my device.
Look this stuff might be stupid but they really don't need your consent to do offer certain features on their website/app which you are voluntarily using.
It seems you are the one who does not understand consent.
Companies don't actually care at all when you say no. Developers who can leverage a 2% kpi bump into a promotion care, and are driving this. (And to be clear, they don't get the promotion because "the company" cares, but because their management chain can transitively benefit.
They'll never let you disable all of their data collection. They need that data to sell to the government, help them decide which ads to push at you, and to leverage against you in any other way which might benefit them.
Companies realize that they're in monopolistic situations where users don't really have a choice, so they know that they're not in any real danger of a significant percentage of users dropping them just because they're doing something awful / annoying. See also: Comcast. The other place this works is if all of the companies in the market hold the line with a particular brand of BS, like gyms. If any of them just offered access for $60/mo with no subscriptions or sign-up / cancellation fees, they'd destroy the industry for everyone else. I'd guess that if anyone tried to do it, they'd get bought out in short order by one of the other large health club companies. Yay capitalism + weak consumer protections.
probably a hot take but microsoft's product and pm culture is garbage leftover from the microsoft's anti customer era and is most entrenched in windows and other old orgs
I'm assuming Azure has less of the culture but I haven't personally experienced it. Mostly my thought is the old culture is much stronger in the older orgs. They seem to be trying to change it but the change is really just superficial with the same people using new words but doing the same things.
Not in large orgs. They missed the Internet, but they did one smart thing: they put Novell out of business by offering a free alternative. Everybody got hooked up and now it's too late. Practically all large organizations that have desktop users are using AD.
I went ahead and installed Linux the moment I realized I had to go through a ton of hoops in order to install Windows 11 offline. I'm only ever going to use Windows for work machines that someone else is paying me to use, and even then, I might just start asking for a Mac instead. I'm over this awful OS nonsense they're doing to Windows. Whoever is in charge of the OS clearly does not care.
If I were manning the ship at Microsoft for Windows, I'd make the OS slimmer and far more lightweight.
I recently installed Windows 10 in a VM to port a program to Windows (Was a horror story). On the left side in the start menu I have ads and other crap: "Trending searches", "Trending videos from the web", "Games for you", "Trending news" and some other stuff like a reminder for the International day for Monuments and Sites.
On the right side I have a weather/news widget from some really shady or local newspapers about "celebrities", a lot of clickbait, stock data etc.
And obviously the first time I opened Edge I was greeted with some annoying banner, that I should login etc.
A default installation of an OS should only come with the bare amount of software necessary. If they had asked: "Do you want to have news/recommendations? - Yes/No,never ask again" it would be really okay as there was no forced consent, but installing it by default is simply a bad decision. (From a users' perspective, it probably makes sense from a corporate perspective as otherwise they wouldn't do it)
It seems there is enough pushback from Microsoft's enterprise clients because the W10 LTSC versions lack all the adware and most of the spyware that is pushed on the regular versions. Of course, they are not advertised anywhere and buying licenses through regular channels is impossible for a home user or a small company.
I haven't compared resource usage between my previous W10 Pro VM and my current W10 LTSC VM but it seems to start up much faster, and of course the aggravation from using it is way lower.
Ironically, my employer just replaces all of Microsoft's crap with its own crap, pushed out to every client through GPOs and SCCM and other tools. So we get full screen banners, sometimes by launching PowerPoint and showing a slide, about things like cybersecurity awareness or [minority group] History Month. And it takes many minutes to boot up and login and get a functional desktop with all that, plus the scanning by McAfee and Nessus and Tanium.
All of these gross advertising decisions baked into the operating system disgust me. Not to mention all the tracking they probably do to you on top of it.
The best solution I've found is Windows 10 IoT Enterprise. It feels like an alternate timeline where Microsoft didn't dive headfirst into manipulative advertising practices. None of those pointless bloatware apps, no blatant advertising loitered across the OS.
I don't want tabloid trash baked into my start menu. It would be one thing if we were actually allowed to curate and choose the news, but it's all selected for us. It feels like they're trying to manipulate the way people think with decisions like that.
> I don't want tabloid trash baked into my start menu. It would be one thing if we were actually allowed to curate and choose the news, but it's all selected for us. It feels like they're trying to manipulate the way people think with decisions like that.
No, they're paid handsomely by others who are trying to manipulate the way people think.
According to MS, the IoT edition is "missing" many "features" --- which in other words "doesn't have the crap you probably don't want if you only want an OS."
It is missing absolutely nothing useful. It also will receive security patches through 2031, unlike the normal LTSC distribution which gets 5 years of support. You have complete control over which updates, if any, are installed.
It is a big pain in the neck to get an LTSC or LTSC IoT license.
I was a systems engineer supporting Windows and software running on Windows at a large corporation for a decade. My only complaint at the time was that the CLI was so inferior to Unix/Linux.
MS' increasingly poor UI/UX decisions starting with Windows 8/Server 2012 have caused me to relegate Windows to a "legacy support" role in a VM on any new hardware I buy. They really had to work to overcome all of that good will, but they've been relentless.
I've been using linux as my primary desktop for the past 20 years. Is it perfect? No, but it's damned powerful for development, fast, and fully customizable.
Ironically, my love of linux on the desktop has also kept me gaming on console. I've strongly considered building a pc and the thought of having to use windows (proton has come a long way, but a lot of games I'd like to play aren't supported) is enough to give me pause. I get the feeling that I'd mainly use WSL except for gaming.
I've used Linux on and off for a few years, but at my former employer, Ubuntu was all we used, so I got used to just using it for longer than I ever did. I used to install it on dying laptops to give them new life. I considered the laptop end of life as soon as all the modern distros stopped working properly or driver support died though. I don't want to fight to make basic things work, that's my OS' job, not mine.
Yeah, dual booting for gaming is a pain. That's why I do most of my gaming in a Windows 10 VM these days. I pass through a GPU and use looking glass for I/O and it's great! I just have Windows living on one of my virtual desktops and can instantly switch between games and host applications.
I'm not sure I'd describe the process as "sane", but I basically did as described in this guide[0], followed by following the setup guide for Looking Glass[1].
just curious which games those are that are not supported? I recently switch to linux from windows and havn't found a single one I couldn't play. My steam list is 167/171 supported and have been thoroughly impressed with how far linux gaming as come.
You think a Mac is better, but it really isn't. In fact, MacOS and iOS are further ahead in terms of dark patterns like this. FOSS OSes don't have these patterns, but they have other issues of course.
OS X is better though. Been using it exclusively for quite a while now and my experience has been very smooth. I’m extremely thankful I don’t have to use windows anymore.
So far, you can remove all of these on Windows 10 and I recommend doing so. I do agree with the sentiment that I might finally learn Linux just to avoid all the ads.
Apple has a similar problem. On setup it wants me to set up siri, payment, etc. My options are to setup now or do it later. There needs to be a third option that I will never setup these things and never ask me again.
I don't think Apple recurringly hounds you to sign in when you hit "Do it later" though. I read "Do it later" here as a subtle reminder that "the option is not gone. You can do it later on your own in your system settings if you want", as opposed to "ok we'll ask you again later unprompted :)"
Everytime my BT headphones connect, Apple Music opens up.
Own and iPhone and you are reminded quite often of the benefits of an iCloud subscription.
Try setting up an iPhone w/o an apple account for that matter, or using an Android phone (that hasn't been de-googled) without a Google account.
Not to mention, users expect their files to be with them everywhere. IMHO Microsoft should make OneDrive free with some obscene high file limit and default My Documents to it, and they should have done this back in the Windows XP days.
The MG3 will turn on the radio turn the volume up to at least 50% and auto play via Bluetooth whenever the ignition starts.
So you might not want music. You turn down the radio and turn it off. Next ignition you find your paired phone starts up Spotify on command from the car and starts playing.
It means you have to never pair your phone. Worse than annoying. Who wants that? At the very least keep volume at 0% if that's what I set it last ignition.
> Everytime my BT headphones connect, Apple Music opens up.
You make it sound like there's code to show you ads when you connect a BT headphone. I can't confirm this despite using it daily.
This doesn't happen with AirPods. Nor does it happen with a Sony headphone. So it's not behavior baked into the OS.
I'm also sure you meant Music.app, not Apple Music. When I open Music.app on a Mac, it shows me the local songs. It's also possible to hide Apple Music in Music.app.
I wouldn't be surprised if some shitty Bluetooth headphones send a "play" command on connection, which then opens the default music player if no others are running, and by default the Music app has some Apple Music stuff (though as you say it can be disabled).
While there should ideally be a toggle in the OS to be able to ignore play commands completely from bluetooth devices (to deal with such defective ones), but I don't see it as outright malicious unlike putting spam in the start menul
> I wouldn't be surprised if some shitty Bluetooth headphones send a "play" command on connection,
Bose's highest end headphones.
> While there should ideally be a toggle in the OS to be able to ignore play commands completely from bluetooth devices (to deal with such defective ones), but I don't see it as outright malicious unlike putting spam in the start menul
Windows does the "proper" thing here and starts playing whatever media was last being played, which while annoying, at least is an attempt to follow the standard. (And Windows really goes the extra mile to remember what was last playing, sometimes resuming sound in a browser tab I haven't looked at in several days!)
> And Windows really goes the extra mile to remember what was last playing, sometimes resuming sound in a browser tab I haven't looked at in several days!
And sometimes calling up some random contact on Teams because it sticks around in the "media" panel. Good times.
> It wasn't even hard to avoid using a Google account.
And then you launch any of the included apps. Chrome wants you to sign in, calendar wants you to sign in, photos wants you to sign in, not to mention Google photos pushes notifications ads trying to sell photo albums.
The photo app will also try to sell you a premium subscription to store your photos online.
The phone is very much designed to be used with a Google account, you can avoid it, but the experience is limited.
Microsoft noticed that people liked having their photos automatically backed up and being able to share them with friends and family. Same goes for documents, being able to push a "share" button on a family finance planning Excel sheet is a lot easier than emailing it around.
There is a lot of crap in the start menu that needs to be removed, and the constant attempts to change the default browser to Edge needs to stop, but "please backup your documents so you don't get all angry at us when your HD dies" is not what I'd call an intrusive ad.
> And then you launch any of the included apps. Chrome wants you to sign in, calendar wants you to sign in, photos wants you to sign in, not to mention Google photos pushes notifications ads trying to sell photo albums.
Yes, if you're going to use those apps, you may as well sign in with a Google account. I don't use them, though. There are plenty of better alternatives to all of them.
> The phone is very much designed to be used with a Google account, you can avoid it, but the experience is limited.
No, it's really not limited. It does take a little more setup to install the apps you want, though.
Everytime you open settings on a new apple device you get a artfully phrased reminder 'x number of days remaining to add applecare' and 'try your new trials'.
> Everytime my BT headphones connect, Apple Music opens up.
I've owned a good dozen BT headphones, non-Apple and Apple branded, and every iPhone since the 3GS.
I've had this happen zero times.
I did have a VW car that insisted on starting to play music every time BT connected. My current Hyundai doesn't do this.
It's your headphones sending the "play" signal, just like with cars. The car connects to the phone and says "let's play music" -> everyone complains about Apple.
I'm quite sure there was a way of preventing this without having a random app running. I actually did use itunes, and later music, but also used that key for other purposes, like Spotify. iTunes / Music never came up on its own when I used my BT headphones (Sony and Shure).
That's a way to turn off the keyboard's function key assigned to the play media command, so you won't accidentally activate it.
The issue being discussed here is that certain bluetooth headsets send the play command when they connect. Hence the open source software to prevent that errant play command from launching a media app, if you happen to own a bluetooth headset that has the issue.
Not to mention that it's also easy to skip. I had Windows 10 on my spare machines, and never have I seen an OS that showed so much level of contempt towards its users.
Every OS update forces me to go through pages and pages of privacy invading settings before letting me use my own computer again. Each time the UI for those settings change with fresh new additions of dark patterns. Each of those settings must be carefully disabled or I'll end up with a key logger on my system.
It's not done even after it shows me the desktop either, proceeding to add Edge to the desktop, taskbar, and the default browser settings, all without even asking.
No other OS comes even close in terms of hostility.
I definitely get hit with a "sign in to siri" on a regular basis. The iPhone I use is a dev phone, I don't need all of the iCloud, etc services. So I suspect that anybody who says "Do it later" will be hounded just like I am.
my nearly 10 year old imac asks me daily to either install updates now, enable auto updates, or "remind me later" for software updates. apple doesn't even update anything for this OS anymore.
This is stupid, but if I recall correctly, if you click the close box “x” in the upper left corner of the notification, it will stop asking, but if you say “remind me later” it continues to ask you. It is utterly infuriating that they use this dark pattern.
I have an iPad I use for reading books (1 app). Every time I wake it up on I have to click through 4 login promts (that interrupt each other, so I have to watch the animation of them appearing and disappearing twice).
Nope just click on the notification to start the setup then decline by opting for "do it latter" poof notification badge is gone. It might popup again after major update if there are "new features" but the same step will dismiss the badge/notif.
That has not been my experience. I got my first Mac last year because it was an irresistible used price, and I expected to hate MacOS. To my surprise, it's actually been very pleasant, inviting me to set up an Apple ID when I first set it up but otherwise staying out of my way.
I'm not sure it ever does ask you to set up those things again. I never set up fingerprint scanning and I don't recall it asking later to set those things up. (maybe it has after a patch though I don't recall it.. also maybe if you go to the place in settings where you might set one of those things up, like if you went into the siri control panel it might prompt you to set it up there... but that seems very reasonable.)
Are you using 'payment' where it asks you to sign-in w/ iCloud? Cause those aren't the same, and I've never seen a macOS install ask for payment information. I just re-installed on a M1 three days ago, nevermind a macOS user of the last 6 years.
"You have to go out of your way (and probably do a web search) in order to figure out how to install Win 11 without using a Microsoft Account."
You are not kidding. I bought my parents two computers and set them up from scratch, taking pains to create local user accounts (because they don't have Microsoft accounts). On one of them, I have no idea how, the sole user ID still managed to be a POS "Microsoft account" created with an arbitrary number of characters from my dad's E-mail ID or something.
The endless badgering to log in with a "Microsoft account" that nobody wants or needs is enough to make me not use Windows. It is beyond offensive at this point.
Dear Microsoft: NOBODY NEEDS ANOTHER "ACCOUNT." This offensive hounding, in combination with the fact that Windows is a disgraceful mess from form to function now, makes it an afterthought in my household. I'm a software developer, and I don't have a single installation of Windows running in my home (and office).
I have a Microsoft account (an ancient one even, anyone remember Hotmail?) I use everyday, but I refuse to use it with Windows 10/11.
Why? Because I don't want sync.
I treat each of my computers as separate, individual, unique machines. Synchronizing the data on them is fucking insane to me because I can't rely on a given machine to be the computer I expect it to be.
And yes, I have separate Google accounts for my phone, tablet, etc., because I do not fucking want sync.
You'll be trading one set of known frustrations with another set of unknown frustrations.
A few years ago, I ran Fedora w/ KDE Plasma. What _seemed_ to be random is the GTK fonts throughout the UI changed to a mono-spaced font regardless of what the control panel showed.
It "resolved itself" within a few weeks.
I don't know if it was an update that caused and subsequently resolved the issue, or something else I did.
This was just one of many hair-pulling examples I ran into across KDE Plasma and Gnome on Fedora.
I have different frustrations with both Windows and macOS.
I'm not disagreeing with your point, but I don't think those frustrations are comparable with advertising in the Start menu and file browser. I also find it funny that you mention problems with fonts as this is an area where I believe both Linux and macOS are ahead of Windows.
> fonts as this is an area where I believe both Linux and macOS are ahead of Windows.
Windows caught up quite some time ago to macOS. I don't see Linux as superior with font handling. Certainly lacks on the rendering side of things (DPI etc).
> comparable with advertising in the Start menu and file browser
Wouldn't know. I use Win 11 Pro so those updates don't seem to have come down to it (yet?) and use Win 10 Ent at work where those will never arrive.
How so? I use Windows 10/11 at work and macOS at home, and Mac's font rendering is light-years ahead of Windows IMO. The font rendering subsystem is why macOS is the go-to choice for graphic designers IIRC.
Ubuntu was my pick, main reasom being that it is the distro Lenovo is offering and thus guaranteed to work with my Lenovo laptop. Agree on the usefull forums and information.
No idea how it compares to other distros, I never tried any. It is a breath of fresh air compared to Windows 10 so!
I'd really not like spamming this again but I should strongly emphasize, stay away from snap and gnome, you would be completely put off computing if you are escaping modern Windows and come to Ubuntu and then experience this nonsense the first thing. They are the same tarpit of user hostile software requiring you fighting your computer 24x7. Some people might disagree about gnome perhaps, but they have a long and well documented history of nastiness, removing features, rewriting everything, deliberately not solving certain bug/feature requests for several years. And since they are de facto in control of gtk now, its also bleeding there too. There are talks of killing theming in gtk 4/5 for example.
And snaps are basically an all in one packaging solution, the main evil relevant to you are forced updates and officially speaking there is no way around it last I checked, at best you can set a grace period. Also they put files in weird locations so good luck trying to edit their settings, etc.
I was at this point a few years back, and I am so happy having made the switch. Kubuntu is my strong recommendation for any switcher's first distro, but there's a lot of great options out there.
Arch Linux is a great choice for someone who wants to know Linux. I am writing this comment from Arch Linux.
Arch Linux is not a great choice for someone who just wants to use Linux. There's a lot of learning just to install it, while less expert-oriented distributions can have a system up and running in 20 minutes with very little expertise on the part of the user.
Because they have other things they need to do, and mastering it may not provide benefits that repay the investment.
I say this as someone who has run Linux on the Desktop for over 20 years. I do not give a crap about knowing the ins and outs of everything on my system. I have zero interest in learning how bluetooth & Wifi & and all of the hundred other subsystems on my computers work. 99% of the time I want to install the OS, and get on with work.
Sometimes that work means getting down and dirty with a subsystem when I want it to do things that isn't on the normal happy path, but the rest of the time, I want Wifi to autoconnect with a saved password and my bluetooth headphones to autoconnect like a normal person and not futz around learning the intricacies of every daemon and config file in the OS.
It's same reason I pay someone else to service my car. I have fully capable of learning to do it, but I don't care. I have better things to do with my time and money, and there's only so many hours in the day.
(Several edits because I misplaced lots of words pre-coffee)
I've also run Linux on the desktop for over 20 years. Knowing everything in the system is probably nearly impossible unless you're a professional sysadm, like people who specialize in what's called devops now. I agree; I don't want to memorize systemd commands or configure WiFi from the command line; there's convenient GUI tools for things now and it's easy to just work on other things. Even as a developer in a Linux-only environment, I let the devops/infrastructure people deal with most problems if I have them, though of course the corporate computing environment is a lot more complex than my home setup.
I disagree about cars though. Back when I had a car, I did my own work, because it took less time and would be done properly. Unless you have a chauffeur or something (or take Uber I guess, but that costs more money), it takes a lot of time to have someone else service your car: you have to drive it to the shop, then sit there for a while until they can get to it, then sit there while they do the work, then sit around a while longer until they can finally check you out (while also trying to upsell you a bunch of crap), then drive home. Then you find out later they messed something up, got grease on your carpet, etc. Even if they fix that, that's even more time you have to spend. It was a lot easier for me to just do it myself. Someone will probably say something about "loaners" here, but that's usually for larger jobs, not just oil changes.
For the record I don't use Arch, I use Fedora, but I know Linux reasonably well. That being said, I would greatly enjoy the chance to learn it better.
I also want to learn Rust, Zig, Nim, D, Go, GLSL, Lobster looks interesting, some game frameworks (Bevy, Monogame, Raylib and Pyglet come to mind), Supercollider, Flutter, LLM's, Ruby on Rails, and a bunch of other stuff I can't even remember.
Learning linux simply has to wait its line in the queue, and unless I happen to master it naturally using Fedora, with that queue ever growing, I'm not sure its time will ever come. Maybe, but then I want to say that for all the above too.
Do you own and drive a car? Do you know how to rebuild the engine? Why not? Can you drive it as well as a professional race car driver? Why not? Why aren't you taking all your free time to master these skills?
Install Arch, get everything working, and DO NOT install updates. I've never had another distro that would randomly render itself unbootable or break core functionality with such frequency with the simple weekly application of updates. Really distressing.
lolwut. My current Arch install has been going strong for over 12 years, and it has very rarely broken, and when it has, very often it's because I went a long time without updating, and/or the issue and fix are mentioned right on the front page of archlinux.org. Gentoo, on the other hand, is (or was when I used it) as you describe, where every other update would randomly break the system and they would tell you on IRC "don't use it if you don't like it, it's free," which was solid advice that I adopted.
>Gentoo, on the other hand, is (or was when I used it) as you describe, where every other update would randomly break the system and they would tell you on IRC "don't use it if you don't like it, it's free," which was solid advice that I adopted.
Gentoo would break a lot when I used it, and I also learned a lot by getting it to work when it broke.
But I do not blame Gentoo for it. It was mostly my fault, for using ~x86 ("testing" keyword) instead of x86.
It happened to me on Arch during the switch from init to systemd.
Update was documented, but I didn’t look. Did my `pacman -syua` as I normally did on a daily, and rebooted to a totally borked system. This is when I was a grad student and really needed that laptop that week.
I still love Arch, but I can’t trust it anymore as a daily driver.
You could set machines up for family that don't know better and they will see the popup and create the account themselves... same as with badgering for upgrades, had family that eventually upgraded by mistake then panick if/when things didnt work
It made my day when my mother told me she was disposing of her desktop computer because she had transitioned all of her computing needs to her iPad. One less headache to deal with.
The thinking is that MS' needs come first, and yours are way, way down the list, unless you're a volume license holder. Whereby, you get an off switch.
So the magnitude or logic of the gain doesn't factor much unless a policy hits the news with a stickiness of several months.
They don't need a lot of conversions. If 2% of users take them up on the ad, that's an increase in revenue and profit. If it pisses off 40% of users, that's not a problem, because only 0.001% of users are going to get so angry that they'll stop using Windows (and those users probably paid for a license anyway as part of the computer purchase, so it won't affect MS's revenues).
Well frankly it all depend on your job. I got a win10 256GB HP laptop at work and never felt fooled.
Most of the files I need are never permanently stored on my laptop so I'm pretty glad IT prioritized a good Graphic Card that support my 4k monitor + 1 ext 1080p display of my home config on top of the internal 1080p.
While yeah on my 7 years old personal mac laptop though, the 256Gb now seems limited because of my personal Photo Library. (Which is by the way the standard MacOS/iOS Photo library which is both available offline/synced/backed up using actually useful and configureable OS provided basic tools as opposed to adversial adware)
Do what I did. Buy a xps 13 (dell has 'developer edition variants of these, so it fully supports linux). I actually bought the windows version because it was cheaper, instantly wiped it on boot and installed linux. I've upgraded to a 1tb ssd and might upgrade to a 2tb ssd given how cheap they are right now. Great experience though!
I need Serif (Affinity Suite), Ableton, Arturia, and Native Instruments to port everything to Linux or at least make it equally functional in Wine first. I could understand going to the trouble if I had anything remotely like the issues people say they have with Windows, but it's been an absolute breeze for me. Always has been. The few ad-ish things I see were trivial to remove. Staying on a local account was effortless. Updates need a reboot about as often as they did the last time I used Linux.
There just...aren't any issues. I don't doubt that all these horror stories I hear are true for the individuals, but I just don't experience it.
While I have my complaints with the Apple ecosystem, I similarly have to agree that in my case as an audio producer - MacOS 'just works' - I rarely have to do updates, there's no intrusive advertising; I'm an Apple Music user and I love how it syncs between my Mac, Phone, and Watch so seamlessly...
Logic is a phenomenal piece of software with an incredible value for it's price and feature set, and I've still got an Ableton instance as well, the VSTs or AU's work perfectly in both.
I've honestly never had issues with my Mac/Logic setup so I've been using it for more than 15 years. I will probably continue using some variation of this setup for as long as I continue to produce music.
I know its probably not what you're looking for, but Bitwig has a similar workflow to Ableton, and has first class Linux support.
A few years ago I was in a similar situation, but decided in the end to not allow myself to be tethered to an operating system, and did away with all the software I couldn't use elsewhere.
If the commenter can't open their existing Ableton files in Bitwig, and/or use the existing VSTs they've likely spent years with and collected or designed presets for, it makes somehow converting to an entirely new DAW far too daunting and complex a process for any serious producer.
I myself use Logic Pro, and have files from Logic and GarageBand from over - (holy crap I'm getting old) - 17 years ago, that still open and play in Logic - (minus the occasional missing plug-in) - and I've used Logic for so long at this point that there is literally almost no barrier between my imagination in terms of composition, engineering and production and the actual software and hardware.
To switch to a solution such as Bitwig not only removes access to the 17+ years of files I've got (who knows how many years of files the original commenter has) - it makes it so I can no longer, e.g. just send a Logic or Ableton file to a fellow producer - which I often do, and is often done; for collaborations - it removes access to the incredible library of software instruments included with Logic that I've slowly became a veritable genius with over more than a decade...
Ultimately, unless you pretty much started with Bitwig, or Ardour, etc - I couldn't ever see a seasoned producer who has settled into their closed-source DAW of choice ever seriously considering this.
It's nice to know I have an escape hatch if I ever start having any of the negative experiences people report with Windows. I just...don't. I've used it since it came on a stack of floppies and it's just been a breeze. Even doing weird destabilizing stuff at worst left it in a state I could fix easily. Usually by just rebooting or unrolling a driver. Things are even better now with Reliability Monitor since it helpfully correlates errors with what caused it most of the time. And those once-useless troubleshooters are actually useful now.
edit: Out of curiosity, I checked. 978 Live sets since I started using it in 2018. It just barely edges out my Reaper set collection from before I moved to Live.
Believe me I know, I had to go through the exact same situation. However, I also considered what terrifying repercussions that'd have for how much control any single company can have over my life.
I understand why people don't want to, it took me a good few years between wanting to move onto Linux and actually doing so, but in the end I'm glad for it. If your priorities are different thats fair enough, but I'm never going back.
Well, they didn't qualify it that way. So no, it's not "perfectly usable." It's perfectly usable for people who don't do much with it. If I need a modern mainframe terminal, it barely matters what laptop or OS I use.
If I need to hold 2TB of samples and have room for 2TB of video I'm working on and prefer it onboard, I can't get that at any price on a MacBook Air, and a soldered on 2TB is hundreds more than plopping a 2TB in my laptop's spare slot. In fact, I can max it out with 8TB storage and 64GB RAM for the markup to get a 2TB SSD/16GB RAM Air.
You see the problem. I'm not saying everyone needs it, but the broad claim that a $999 Air is perfectly usable has some large and varied edge cases. If a $999 Air were enough for me, then I would have put a new battery in my old laptop and put Linux on it instead of upgrading. Apple's lineup was considered and dismissed for the absurd markups on storage and RAM.
It's not harassment. It's just there is some set of managers of various levels tasked with increasing the % of people using the online account in Windows. They have a metric, and they work towards it. There is no one in the company who can decide to not do this nagging - either a person doesn't have the authority, or it requires negotiating with too many owners, or this metric is very high-level, or it's the CEO who doesn't care about such low-level things because he uses the online account and doesn't see it. It's always like that in all modern corporations.
Exactly! It’s the personal responsibility / fault of a handful of specific people who cowardly hide behind the corporation.
I wonder if they would dare explain how they decide to add these adds to people’s OS in some new social setting.
> “We are continuing the exploration of badging on the Start menu with several new treatments for users logging in with local user accounts to highlight the benefits of signing in with a Microsoft account (MSA).”
Wow. Even the sentence itself is incredibly indirect and obfuscated. They aren't able to own it and say "We are exploring new ways to promote the benefits of signing in with a Microsoft account by adding badges to the Start menu for users logging in with local user accounts." or "We are adding badges to the Start menu to bug users with local user accounts to switch to a Microsoft account."
Getting local user accounts working under Win 10 was already bad enough, just figuring that out took loner than getting my first Linux installed and running. And yes, I went through all of that to avoid yet another MS Account.
Not sure what MS wants to achieve with all of that.
I think there'd be significant overlap with the folks that setup Windows 11 without a Microsoft Account and those that use tools like Open-Shell to rid themselves of some of these start menu "enhancements".
I vaguely remember a time when browsers would install all kind of crappy add-ons, or any other software installer for that matter. Now we reached a point were the OS does it...
Did the browser do that install, or did the user install something on their own that came with additional software? the infamous purple gorilla or whatever it was that you thought you were installing one thing, but a whole other thing was installed at the same time. sourceforge's dark UI of downloading software, but also downloading/installing a whole other program hidden behind a vaguely worded auto-selected checkbox. i just don't remember being able to blame the browser for this.
I like how "badging" could easily be read "badgering", as I was naturally primed to "autocorrect" it upon reading the title and the article leading up to that.
I have a windows 10 laptop I haven't upgraded to 11. Every once in a while I turn it on and its not at my desktop but at a "lets upgrade to windows 11!" screen and it requires several "no, lets not" buttons before you can tell it not go away but "go away for now". Quite irritating.
> Harassing them seems more likely to make them angry than to make them change their minds.
I think the sad reality is that more often than not this is how large corporations win, users do cave on average. Only the most passionate, the most engaged ones, the ones posting here for example will refuse to give in...
Case in point, I only use windows for one game and one other program, and my long term plan is to eliminate it from my life altogether. Sorry microsoft, you really messed up here.
I wonder the same thing about the regular prompts to change my default search back to Bing, all disguised in language about optimizing Edge with recommended settings.
The only reason I use Windows in 2023 is for video gaming. Every other non-gaming PC I own is running Linux.
Windows has become inferior to Linux in every other way. More upgrade headaches, worse resource utilization, worse desktop environment, more crashes, data collection, and now embedded ads.
These technology companies have really demonstrated over the past few decades that they are unable to maintain reliable products over the long term. Every piece of good software (and even hardware in many cases) degrades almost immediately into an inferior product due to laziness and greed.
These companies would rather destroy their flagship products chasing the smallest prospect of extra revenue, than leave what works alone and innovate on something new.
Beginning with the XP I became a heavy Windows user until version 7. Those releases were the heyday for Windows IMO. But since 8 and, worse of all, 11 I ditched it altogether and none of the computing devices in the house run Windows.
This is all to say that my main gaming rig runs Ubuntu 22.04 LTS with Gnome, heavily tweaked, to look and behave like MacOS and.... Its a dream.
Heck, in fact I like it so much that I prefer it to MacOS in every possible way. The only issue is, still, the lack of Adobe support.
And that is why I still have an Apple machine.
Give it a try. You will be surprised by how well so many games run.
What kind of graphics card are you using and have you run into many issues for multi display and/or high refresh rates (assuming you're running this)?
I'm so close to dumping windows and my final concern is gpu and multi monitor support. I only ever run linux on servers or VMs, so no real experience on bare metal.
I am on an ancient 1080 ti but that still gets the job done on the games I want to play (Total War series, RDR2 and some indie games).
About high refresh rate games: I have gamed on 144hz/120hz (one gaming monitor and another OLED TV) but I prefer to lower it so I can increase quality of graphics.
Multi monitor I can't say I have much experience with them connected at the same time but I have used the OLED+Gaming monitor few times but I can't say I do it often.
What I do very often is to leave the machine running and use RDP/Steam client to connect to it and game/work.
Linux support, and Ubuntu and Gnome for that matter, improved leaps and bounds since last LTS.
Not the person you asked, but I run Kubuntu with an RTX 4080 and a 4K 144hz display and every single thing works out of the box. Not every game I want to play works with Proton, but close. Gaming performance vs Windows has been indistinguishable, and it boots up much faster. My Windows drive sits at a half-loaded desktop with no icons for like a minute... No idea why.
Dual monitors will work well if they're similar, but I wouldn't mix hi-dpi with low-dpi or different refresh rates. I've heard most of that doesn't work or is poorly supported.
I've been looking more and more at this since I got a Steam Deck and found surprisingly good compatibility on almost every game. If Steam OS was made available for your run-of-the-mill gaming rig I'd install it in a heartbeat and give it an earnest test run.
That said, there is still a latent unease from my last misadventure with a Linux gaming PC from 2017, which ended in a LOT of restarting into Windows whenever the guys wanted to play a game I couldn't get working
My only speedbump at this point is non-steam games, specifically in my case overwatch2 and diablo4. Can I run the battlenet launcher and it's games on steam os .. can i do it and not be banned by their 'anti cheat' spyware?
I saw that page right after I made the comment and googled it, but it seemed a little light on details and I was suspicious that it was the old Steam Machines distro as opposed to the frankly quite pleasant distro on the Steam Deck.
EDIT: Yep [1], it looks like that page is for the old SteamOS
Try Bottles (use bottles.com).. I smashed through the Diablo 4 Beta on VanillaOS and Bottles and can also confirm that Overwatch, Hearthstone, StarCraft and Diablo 3 works. The scaling / DPI for the BattleNet client is a little small on my 4K monitor, but other than that, it works well.
> The only reason I use Windows in 2023 is for video gaming. Every other non-gaming PC I own is running Linux.
It was the same for me until a month ago. Thanks to the recent developments of WINE and Proton, gaming on Linux has been reliable enough that I could switch entirely to Linux and not look back. Couldn't be happier about it.
Unless you only like to play the most recent AAA releases, I suggest you give it a try.
I have an HDR monitor and Windows 11 autoHDR is genuinely great. I've been considering moving my gaming PC to Linux but I really don't want my monitor features to go to waste. Maybe I'll just sit in WSL2 unless absolutely necessary but I'm sure there's a bunch of random headaches that would come with that
They made a big mess out of it, and I must admit I dont know if it really is malware, but IIRC the main drama was about it being kernel level, totally ignoring the fact that basically every major anticheat was running in kernel for years beforehand.
But having to swap between either physical computers or dual-boot is just asking too much for me. I like my convenience. Having one OS that does whatever I want is good. Linux is getting closer with stuff like WINE, but I play too much obscure, old, heavily modded, or just games that have issues as it is - and don't want to add the OS into the mix. I like not having to worry about my OS being the problem. Just the other day I found out Old School Runescape's new launcher won't have Linux support, and I play that daily. :/
Some of the defaults in Windows suck, and I've had to disable some tracking and other crap I didn't like, but other than that it's been seamless for as long as I've had computers. That's good enough for me, even if it's a hodgepodge mess in terms of design.
> having to swap between either physical computers or dual-boot is just asking too much for me.
Funnily enough I found myself in the same situation but with the reverse outcome. The computer I currently use daily dual-boots Fedora and Windows 11, but I don't think I've touched Windows in months, probably not since I first set it up actually.
I do sometimes get issues with very specific games, but my philosophy is that I'd rather miss out on a piece of software than have it tie to me a specific OS, though it sounds like your more into gaming than me so I can see why that'd be more of an issue for you.
> but I play too much obscure, old, heavily modded, or just games that have issues as it is - and don't want to add the OS into the mix.
This is sort of my ballpark. Generally, I play new games on PS5. When I'm playing on the computer it's either something on RetorArch or an older PC game (case in point, I'm currently playing a modded Heroes Of Might and Magic III on Linux).
For older games, I found that it runs as well as on Windows, sometimes better. When I had a Windows machine, quite often I had to tinker with compatibility mode to get shit to run properly, while on Linux I've been having no issues.
You mentioned OldSchool RuneScape, and for that you can just install the Steam version directly. Seems to be fully supported by Proton with no issues [0]
Regarding OSRS, there is a very popular user-made client called Runelite. Going forward, it will only work when launched through the Jagex launcher. So most players will be stuck with Windows. The Steam client is improving, but it's still nowhere near as functional.
No Jagex Launcher on Linux really kills it for me. I play RuneScape 3 primarily (but I did just start an OSRS Ironman to have something to do while I play on my RS3 Iron), and there being seemingly no easy way to have all my Jagex account characters on Linux is keeping me on Windows. I really hope that the RS3 community finds a way to get around that.
I recently had the choise building home server with Windows or Linux, and due to diminishing and frustrating experience, not least with the unavoidbale spinning fans on my windows computers (I call them vacuum when I talk about them to my wife), due to the misfortune I have to work with Windows I started to dig myself into Linux matters instead and now have a satisfactory quiet and cheap home server setting at home.
Works well without activation, if you don't mind the overlay. But what I did is that I pointed it at a KMS emulator, which is a piece of software that responds to every activation request as a positive. The internet is full of lists of servers like these, but I host it myself - basically just built and compiled this one: https://github.com/Wind4/vlmcsd
I haven't done the research but I think if I could get overwatch2 (and diablo4 if they don't fuck it up) running on my steamdeck I'm not sure keeping a windows box around makes much sense to me anymore because... yeah, it's pretty much an expensive xbox at this point.
These kinds of changes just make the OS look cheap (like a bazaar of sorts). They're visually ugly, but easily ignored (I rarely open the start menu).
What I'm more concerned / annoyed by is the trend of Windows fighting with you. For example, try to disable the real-time antivirus protection. The UI makes it look like it's off, but then it turns back on by itself. Then you go to group policy to make it explicit that you don't want it. It's off for a bit and then it freaking changes the group policy (resets it back).
First time I noticed it do this I though I got hacked because I couldn't imagine the OS doing something so malware-ish, but it does. What's the point of having a setting at all?
It's a neglected heap of legacy garbage, maintained just superficially enough to maintain profitability from its inertial marketshare (i.e., how everything runs on it already and how it's a massive coordinate problem to ever change that).
The KDE Dolphin file manager is way better than Explorer, feature-wise, and has been for probably over a decade. Dolphin was made for free by like five Dutch guys. Explorer is from a multi-billion dollar corporation that's buying every service and other company you know. I guess it's not profitable to improve user UX, so you have ridiculous artifacts like how much Explorer still sucks and how long it's sucked. :D (I think it only got a dark theme, like... 5 years ago? Linux file managers have had those for decades.)
If you're lucky enough to experience a change in your priority matrix such that things Windows is bad at (like programming) become more salient to your well-being than things Windows is good at (like playing AAA games), I recommend trying Linux (shout out to Manjaro) out. I'm glad I experienced that change, allowing me to flee to Linux and never look back.
Maybe time fro another, huge, anti-competitive fie from the EU, like when back when MS did all those shenanigans around internet Explorer? I wouldn't be surprised of we see similar proceedings in the next years around cloud services (everything from OneDrive to Azure and equivilants, Office, you name it) once the EU is done with mobile devices.
that's an interesting strategy to use alternate routes to the same information. Might be an opportunity to use more of the WIN+R shortcut to launch applications from that lil dialog. Makes me daydream of a day when Microsoft gets into a cat and mouse and starts slipping ads in many other dialogs that currently lack them.
Maybe not exactly elegant, but certainly much more neat and tidy, clean and consistent than it is now. From W95/NT4 up to at least W2K it was quite OK.
And using the old-style “theme” or whatever it was called, you could use that tidy and consistent UI throughout XP in stead of the garish “Fisher-Price” look, via Vista in stead of the annoying and distracting transparency, and well into Windows 7 in stead of whatever the “native look” of that version may have been like (I have no idea, switched to the old look first thing I did).
It only finally went to shit with Windows 8, and unfortunately restoring the Start Menu wasn't enough to make 10 good again.
I have to disagree slightly. The default for Windows 98 had a consistent aesthetic, consistent short-cuts across applications, and a sensible menu system (even if things were janky on the backend).
It’s funny for what is essentially a ‘file manager’ Microsoft makes it hell to manage your files. My friends and family and constantly confused by the 10 different interfaces there are for file management. Desktops are
a mess of of half trash files. The cloud integration the file explorer is a confusing mess. The UI for saving a file from Office is the absolute worst. I’ve had to help someone just save a file and it was difficult even for me to figure out the UI — borderline comical how bad it is.
File management in Windows is, I think, the best for a consumer OS, on par with Linux (sometimes better, sometime worse, depending on your distro).
Not because it is good, but because Microsoft can't keep up with the others when it comes to messing up file management.
iOS: you essentially don't have files, just internal storage for apps
Android: you have files, but they are making it really hard to access them
MacOS: actually not that bad, but they still try hard to hide the filesystem from you
Linux: it is a UNIX system, files are everything and you have free access, but the experience tends to be inconsistent because there is no standard toolkit
With Windows, you have full access to the filesystem (depending on your permissions of course), the UI has become inconsistent lately, but there is almost always a way to get to the common file picker, and the explorer shell is quite nice: you can open file, copy, move, drag and drop, etc... with relative consistency. These operations seem trivial but if you have used some bare bone Linux desktops, you will realize that they are not.
The basic file manamegment in windows is good. But its the inconsistency that kills it. Saving a file in the new word is ridiculously awful.
click on file, in the top menu bar. Instead of a drop down menu, a ribbon apears from the left. The word file is nowhere to be seen.
click on save, two columns appear, filling the entire screen. Left column: Onedrive, Sites, This PC, add a place, browse. Right column: a list of sharepoint locations, that i have visited recently, without any tree structure. I don't want to use any of the cloud solutions (onedrive, sites, any sharepoint), I want to store it locally.
click on This PC. The right column changes: file name, extension, new folder. But it doesn't tell me where I am on this PC, even though it shows me a couple subfolders. But it doesn't show my my current path. So I look back into the left column.
click on Browse. I get the old save menu, with a fully functioning explorer.
I have to disagree. There’s nothing like column view for windows. The “address” bar in the windows file manager is very useful, though. I’ll give you that. But other than that, I find Finder better. Finder also has tabs (I don’t know if windows copied this, I haven’t used windows since windows 8).
Ad iOS: The Files app won't let you see the whole filesystem (and unlike on Mac there's no way to escape the jail), and the app itself is pretty anaemic, but it is possible to, for example, download a bunch of files from the web, make a ZIP out of them and copy it to a SMB share. Which is already the most complicated operation I'd want to do on a phone. iPadOS would deserve something better, that's true.
Agreed. That OneDrive thingy my company foolishly employs is making the file ""manager"" only bigger, not better.
One of my favourite is how it overrules me in renaming a file. Half way into renaming it decides I will not rename it and just clears my editing, or exits editing mode. Refreshes or something, ruining what I do along the way. Renaming files is a hit or miss thing, unpridictable. Something pretty essential thing solved pretty well more than half a century ago, managed to be ruined by MS.
> Half way into renaming it decides I will not rename it and just clears my editing, or exits editing mode.
In case you're curious what's actually going on here, it happens when one of the status symbols (e.g uploading or synced) on a file in the same folder changes, which causes the view to refresh and the text box to be cleared. That's why it happens much more often when renaming multiple files.
I remember finding a bug report about it years ago, with lots of people complaining about it and no response from MS. Infuriating.
The business version of onedrive is just a shell around SharePoint which has a bunch of awkward character restrictions. This is the cause of that. I don't use consumer onedrive but I wouldn't be surprised if it doesn't do this.
The shell yes. Lack of a decent terminal would sink it—besides the other reasons it is not suitable any longer... software support and security concerns.
Reply edit: Guess you could putty into Linux, but not worth the hassle at that point.
Sorry, that was very misleading wording on my part. I started a job where they gave me a Linux machine that was lying around. When it was clear I was going to stay they said I could get whatever I wanted. I was going to get a Windows machine but since everyone else was on a Mac (and it was the time when the 27" iMac was brand new) I decided to follow suit and that's what I've been on ever since.
That's when the Explorer and task bar started getting convoluted, hiding things, and becoming abstract instead of concrete. It's done in the spirit of helping newbies of course but it actively harms folks who do understand, as well as crippling the newbies who might learn, to always be dependent.
Also, the transparent effects didn't help anything and look silly in hindsight. They also took out color customization and you couldn't have a dark theme for the next ten years!
Of course the type ahead search in the Start menu was a big improvement, and elevation for security. But as always one step forward, two steps back with modern Windows.
Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 were both very good operating systems. My memory is hazy, but I feel like Windows XP didn't really hit it's stride until SP 1 or 2, when USB really stabilized.
My number 1 complaint after switching from linux mint back to windows after years in linux-land after building a gaming rig -
The auto sort by date and group by most recent in their file explorer that you have to either use a third party app to turn back into sort by name and group by none, or - do that selection for literally every folder on its own.
That's a fucking train wreck. Who decided that sorting by date instead of name was a good idea? WHY?
> Who decided that sorting by date instead of name was a good idea?
It depends on the context. Sometimes when I'm looking at photos, I really do prefer sorting by date. Similarly, when I'm looking at the Downloads folder, I'm probably most interested in the thing I just downloaded, so having that near the top makes a lot of sense and would gladly prefer that than having it sorted alphabetically.
However, if I'm just looking at a directory of documents, alphabetical wins for sure. If I'm looking at a music collection, I'd probably want to sort by artist name alphabetically, but not necessarily filename.
I can kind of understand making it the default sort, but not getting rid of the others. Most users don’t know they can sort the list of things in a folder. They just want to see the thing they just created, or the thing they were last working on. So sort by either creation date, modification date, or date added is what will be most helpful to most of them and result in the least open tickets for Microsoft. But to remove the other options, that’s just bad.
Maybe I misunderstand, it's definitely possible to sort by name and select to apply it to all folders? That feature has been there for several decades...
I have used Windows since, well since Windows became a thing, and I have never had problems with finding Copy/Cut/Properties/Etc. but every single time in Windows 11.....
It amazes me that Windows gets worse with every update. I'd rater use an updated Windows Vista than Win11, yuck!
Windows 8 & Windows phone had a lot of good things going for it that would eventually get no resources & thrown out. They also had many design ideas borrowed by iOS & Android.
Surely you must mean after Windows 7? Windows 8 was the beginning of the pile of poo that is Windows on the PC-playing-a-tablet and Microsoft just dig deeper and deeper with every new version down the awful tablet design they have going on.
I actually liked parts of it (W8) on my tablets. I chose windows tablets exactly because I know I get updates for years (except now with the TPM requirement for W11). I still use a Yoga 2 8" tablet (9yrs old) every day in bed.
Even though I run Linux on everything else I haven't tried and or messed with it on a tablet. I do not consider my Steam Deck as a tablet - I do use it a lot as one but 99% of the time I enjoy the controller input over touch.
I just can't find a replacement for my Yoga 2 8". The front facing speakers are amazing and every new version of this tablet runs android which is an auto skip for me.
I, too, loved Windows 8 and the small Windows tablets from that era. There are dozens of us! It was so cool to have such a tiny device that worked fine as a tablet, then be able to plug a mouse and keyboard and play games on Steam or write music in Ableton or code in the same IDE you'd use at work. Windows 10 was a step backwards in presenting a modern and touch-friendly UI to the user, and Windows 11 is even worse with all the screen real estate wastage from floating menus and rounded corners, plus the useless "recommended" section, ads and widgets.
Since the manufacturers all gave up on the 8" Windows tablet form factor, I think the only path forward is larger but skinnier tablets. Same trend as phones, alas. For a while my main computer was a 10" Lenovo, but now I've bitten the bullet and moved to a 13" Surface Pro. It's a great piece of kit performance-wise and reasonably tough (my screen is smashed up from backpacking/camping, still works) but it still feels less "cool" and cyberpunky than those cheap and cheerful tablets with a full OS on them used to be.
The Zune HD UX is godawful. Not only do you have to both press a button and interact with the touchscreen to play/pause, skip, or adjust volume, but the relevant button is on the opposite end of the device from the headphone jack. That means it's sitting upside down in your pocket and you have to reach into your pocket and past the bulk of the device just to adjust the volume.
The original Zune UX was a work of art by comparison. The buttons were on the face and recessed, so not only did they not get pressed accidentally, you could control your media right through the outside of your pants without even reaching into your pocket.
You’d have to have the power to upset people, take their personal income (bonuses) away, or even fire them outright.
People like this don’t get promoted in large established organisations. They have to be there from the beginning. All of the “asshole CEOs” are in this category. Think of Jobs, Gates, Elon, or Bezos. They all built massive corporate empires by not accepting garbage from their underlings, but this kind of brutal criticism is not nice. Eventually they get replaced by nice managers like Tim Cook, Sundar Pichai, etc… and quality starts heading downhill.
It’s a corporate cycle that’s been going on for centuries.
The depressing part is that their design department (or possibly an agency they hire) make these really fancy UI vision videos. But then you use actual Windows and its UI trash.
No, they aren't. The windows division has consistently shrank to the point it isn't even a top line revenue source for the company anymore and is rolled up into the experience and devices group with office, Xbox, etc. Windows is less than 12% of MS quarterly revenue and continuing to shrink: https://www.kamilfranek.com/microsoft-revenue-breakdown/
The company could totally lose all windows revenue tomorrow and barely notice it. In a few years it will probably be into the single digits of percent revenue and near total irrelevance. Windows is dead as any meaningful business for the company.
Windows is the foundation of their Enterprise Services, Server Products & Cloud Services, and Office Products & Services, which together (including Windows) comprise 73% of their revenue. If Windows disappeared off the face of the Earth, all of that other revenue would go with it.
Interesting that people were mocking “scripting” languages when you have revolutionary stuff like openAi being developed in python.
I don’t, however, love Electron. I’ve built a couple apps myself with it, it’s just that the DOM is too slow.
If someone manages to create an engine that could remove the lag that you get when rendering and manipulating large amounts of HTML that would be fantastic. But right now it’s a subpar experience when compared to native apps.
You just linked to a graph showing how much they are making off of their services that these ads are pushing. They are definitely making a lot of money off of this.
Bingo. Windows looks like a trashy billboard for Microsoft's other services because that's exactly what it is, because that's where the fresh money is.
putting aside that 12% is still a fair bit, I wonder how much value it brings them in more intangible ways, that would only become obvious if they "lost" windows.
Developer mindshare. There are a huge amount of developers who want Windows (or really Visual Studio proper), and there is a meticulously tarred highway from Windows to Azure.
The irony is that this bullshit will drive developers away, because they are some of the least likely to put up with it.
> There are a huge amount of developers who want Windows
I watched rabid Windows fans that had been developing for many years slowly become disappointed apologists during the decade of 2010. They still use Windows and trust .NET and SQL Server, but they have had their joy slowly beaten out of them by Microsoft’s change of focus.
Balmer yelling “Developers developers developers” on stage in 2000 was a sign of how important developers used to be to the company.
I think Microsoft should get back to their roots and create a Windows Developer Edition for individuals & small businesses: remove all the consumer shit, fix the tasteless look, pre-install developer tools, charge $100 per year for it (with discounts to onboard anyone developing targeting Windows OS). Nice if they could come up with a GUI to compete with Electron (or at least an HTML slimmed down with inefficient features removed?). They need another VB6 too! (Disclaimer: I’ve not really used VB6). Pushing your developers into the arms of Apple Mac’s seems like a poor long-term strategy.
I know this will never happen, but I wish that they would go even a step further than that:
I wish they would admit that, for better or worse, Linux is the desktop to corral around. A proprietary OS for BYO hardware is very simply a Bad Idea, both in terms of developers (because you're at the mercy of the OS developer's documentation only) and in terms of users (because software will always theoretically be more stable on an OS that a developer can crack open).
So, rather than creating a Windows Developer Edition and charging for it, I would love to see them sunset Windows into a legacy/Enterprise-only OS that they charge a hefty fee for. And then I'd love to see them build a Linux distro that deeply interops with their services (i.e. their real money-makers) that they release for free.
This new "Windows" would be the new OS that comes pre-installed on laptops by HP, Dell, Lenovo, etc. It could look essentially the same -- perhaps their desktop environment could be called Glass (get it?) -- and it could still run win32 apps via Wine (which they would be a massive contributor to in this fantasy world of mine). A headless version could of course be available for servers running Azure. Etc etc etc.
They could charge for support (i.e. the FOSS playbook that's been pushed the 70s). They could of course continue to create proprietary apps and modules that they charge for, I don't care -- for example, a CoreAudio/CoreMIDI competitor that only audio professionals would really need. I'm not naive enough to think that proprietary/non-free software will ever go away, but the OS is simply not the place for that. Platforms of all kinds benefit from being FOSS.
I know that there's a great kernel down there, but Windows is just a mess. Just kill the damn thing. Let it die. I ran Windows 11 since it was released and recently switched back to 10 because 11 is just so unbearably bad, and I still only use Windows at all as little as possible, only when I have to for certain work.
None of this will ever happen of course, but a man can dream.
>> I'd love to see them build a Linux distro that deeply interops with their services (i.e. their real money-makers) that they release for free.
>> This new "Windows" would be the new OS that comes pre-installed on laptops by HP, Dell, Lenovo, etc. It could look essentially the same -- perhaps their desktop environment could be called Glass (get it?) -- and it could still run win32 apps via Wine (which they would be a massive contributor to in this fantasy world of mine). A headless version could of course be available for servers running Azure. Etc etc etc.
They created their own derivative of the Chrome browser, so why not create their own derivative of ChromeOS that does what you are saying? :)
LOL since 2010 I've watched windows laptops disappear and mac laptops appear in pretty much every department i visit EXCEPT finance. There is exactly one engineer on my team that still uses windows but he admits that it's just inertia. Every piece of software he uses regularly either exists on linux/mac or can be replaces quite easily on linux/mac with no loss in productivity. Hell he spends most of his time in windows ACTUALLY in the linux subsystem.
I still have a single windows box and it's more or less a game console at this point and since getting a steamdeck I'm not sure it makes a ton of sense to keep it. Steamdeck+ps5 probably gives me all the gaming I want with less hassle.
I have a gaming box too, but recently noticed that Minecraft is much faster on Linux, hence I installed Linux along. Still most of games are on windows, but this is old laptop and I don't have time to test them and move to Linux.
It is on at least one less computer than it could be.
I decided not to have Windows at home (I'd choose Pro version as preference for several reasons). It is enough suffering with it working hours, I feel relieved almost every day when I can turn it off finally.
They make no money here. Not from license, nor from advert or other whatever they try to push down the throat.
Plenty of us at MSFT won't even use a windows desktop because of decisions like this. I don't know who's in charge here, but way to go on killing the goodwill of everyone elses work with stupid features everyone actually hates.
I dunno what it's like nowadays, but when I was at MSFT during the win8/early win10 times, the internal mailing lists where 10x as angry and vicious as what you saw in public. Microsoft employees loved Windows and were fucking pissed that it was getting ruined.
I guess they've all been beaten into submission and/or managed out by now..
Well yeah, I would be pissed too if I couldn't go home proud of the work I did. Like what is even the point of pouring you heart and soul into a thing if by the time anyone sees it it's just a wall of ads?
I am not upgrading from Windows 10. These newer releases are turning the OS into an ad-serving platform, which is unfortunate because the user is essentially paying for the OS. Microsoft is trying to have its cake and eat it too.
If I'm paying for the product, I don't expect to be flooded with ads.
I've literally never touched a single PC running Windows 11. I've normally been an early adopter-- I even used Windows 8.0 and 8.1 but I just have zero interest in Windows 11.
I earn my living on a Mac, do my photography hobby on a Mac-- Windows exists (for me) only for games, and Linux is closer to parity every day.
It's unfortunate, because there are some improvements like WSA (Windows Subsystem for Android) [1] that I think are a big step in the right direction. The problem is the OS is becoming user-hostile in order to squeeze every last penny out of users. On a paid product (when there are an entire universe of free software), what is the point of paying for ads?
When 8 and 8.1 came out, I upgraded immediately because I thought I'd need to get with the times eventually. I suppose, in retrospect, 8 wasn't that bad. It had questionable design choices, but not anti-consumer design. Even Vista wasn't anti-consumer, it was just very unpolished. Perhaps it's easier to accept mistakes than it is to put up with malicious behaviour.
I like the ads. They spice up my day and give me something fun and interesting to look at when I'm bored at work. Plus I find it positive to see adverts for useful and enjoyable products and services. Thanks Microsoft for putting these ads in my Start Menu where they are handy and easy to find.
Maybe they could also put some adverts for products and services that are relevant to my interests into other parts of the operating system. I would personally enjoy the opportunity to see exciting new products in Explorer search results, or while making changes in the Registry Editor, for example. Just my 2c!
Same, hopefully they can even figure out how to inject video adverts into Windows Media Player, i.e. when you double click one of your mp4s to play. That way it's almost like having an offline YouTube experience right there in your native OS
I personally would like ads in Teams, so that when I am talking to my coworkers, and mention for example, virtual machines, a nice popup tells me which virtual reality headset just got released. If I mention a user opening a ticket, the popup tells me which attorney close to me can help me fight traffic violations.
First it was Apple who fucked up the butterfly keyboard and out of spite I just said "no thanks" and bought a HP laptop with a beefy GPU instead. Never looked back, until now.
I'm using Windows on the said laptop and just in the last couple of months they have started adding more and more "interactive" horseshit that is simply meant to peddle their Edge browser and Bing search engine.
I mean, did you know that Microsoft Teams can hijack your Dev Console and interpret a HEX color code as a phone number? It literally hijacks the console and interrupts you from doing any kind of debugging.
My next purchase is 100% going to be Apple again since I've heard great things about the new chips and keyboard issues seem to be solved also. Microsoft is just doing dumb stuff right now, like really dumb and anti-user. Needless say, they have no shame to do this towards their paying customers, too.
I just bought a nice Asus Zenbook and first I did as soon as I received it was installing pop os. I keep my old windows notebook near by in case I need something I can't do in the Linux machine, but its use is more and more infrequent.
I use Ubuntu for work, but my gaming rig runs windows. I went through all of the applications I use on my windows pc the other day and they're all available on linux now. With proton getting as good as it is, app availability on linux, and with the annoying occasional ads coming through my windows os, I'm starting to think I won't upgrade to windows 11 when 10 stops being supported.
I had to use Ubuntu at work and the experience made me hate it to the core.
My experience: Gnome it ships with is too opinionated with no basic configuration options without installing 200 extensions which may or may not work, no option to turn off the touchpad when an external mouse is pugged in, no hibernate option because z-ram or something, no fractional scaling because "pixels aren't fractional" to quote Gnome devs, Wayland broke screen sharing in some apps and extensions while switching to X11 gave me screen tearing and made touchpad gestures stop working, had no HW acceleration in Chrome, SNAP and APT shit the bed needing me to spend hours going through forum posts for fixes and tinker with the command line, OOM daemon can just straight up kill your main productivity app you're currently using, the list goes on. This is not a great UX.
All those issues are productivity show stoppers for me, and in Windows 11 Professional they just work for out of the box without the need to install any extensions or tinker with any config files. Also better battery life.
Hot take: I can ignore/disable ads but I can't ignore an OS where much is broken or is never meant to work.
I thought this was supposed to be the flagship Linux distro but I'm sorry to say that it's more janky than the car Homer Simpson designed.
Still like Linux but via ssh and on a server or embedded system.
Tbf most of the issues you describe are with Gnome. I've been using linux for 7 years and I touched Gnome once for 5 minutes and hated it.
Never had any of the other issues you mention. Screen tearing in X11 is very easy to avoid for example, literally two lines in a config file, much simpler and faster than all the registry key garbage you have to do on windows.
That doesn't mean they don't exist for other users. SNAPs are garbage. I need hibernate. Hibernate does not work on Ubuntu. I need fractional scaling (125%) for my eyesight. That does not work well on Ubuntu or even on other distros, while it's absolutely flawless on Windows. I need HW decode for watching youtube videos on my laptop. That doesn't exist by default in any Linux distro. Your average user won't want to fiddle with Wayland, VA-API and chrome flags, read on the Arch wiki, just to get something that works out of the box on Windows.
You can't tell me with a straight face that those are not relevant issues for an OS for the average user, even though you personally might not have them because you're a tech professional proficient in Linux who lives in the terminal or something.
>Screen tearing in X11 is very easy to avoid for example, literally two lines in a config file
Yeah, two lines which can brick your display output if you don't know what your doing and just blindly copy-paste stuff off the internet that's out of date or not compatible with your distro or hw/driver configuration. Let's be real here, no average user is gonna want to fiddle with the terminal to not have screen tearing because you know who doesn't have screen tearing out of the box? The Windows 11 installation the came on your Walmart laptop.
>much simpler and faster than all the registry key garbage you have to do on windows
Screen tearing is non existent on Windows and I haven't had to touch registry keys in over 8 year, and I'm sort of a power user. I feel like your view on Windows seems outdated and based on FUD you read online not on long term personal experience.
> That doesn't mean they don't exist for other users
Right, but it also doesn't mean issues with the OS. They can be issues with the desktop environment.
> I feel like your view on Windows seems outdated and based on FUD you read online not on long term personal experience.
I used windows for a long time, but not in years. So do tell me for example, if I wanted to shrink the task bar to say, 25px height, which is much smaller from what Windows allowed me in the past, how would you do this?
Additionally, many of the guides I'm reading for removing ads and telemetry are much more involved than adding those two lines to the X config. Some of them involve the command prompt, and some are just links to third party proprietary software. I'd rather have screen tearing than telemetry and ads, and if this mythical "average user" feels the opposite way, I'd wager say that's a user failure, not an OS failure.
>Right, but it also doesn't mean issues with the OS. They can be issues with the desktop environment.
There could be for me as an average end user I don't care that every Linux Distro is a bazaar engineering project where the OS and DE are not built and seamlessly integrated together by the same company like Windows and MAcOS.
>I used windows for a long time, but not in years.
I have.
>So do tell me for example, if I wanted to shrink the task bar to say, 25px height, which is much smaller from what Windows allowed me in the past, how would you do this?
I mean now you're moving the goalposts and clutching at straws. You cant with a straight face tell me that the faults with Linux/Ubuntu such as lack of browser HW acceleration, lack of fractional scaling, lack of hibernate are comparable to the fact that you can't set the taskbar to an arbitrary size. The former is actual issues, the latter is a lack of configuration options. Those are not the same.
>Additionally, many of the guides I'm reading for removing ads and telemetry are much more involved than adding those two lines to the X config.
Like I said, I can live with telemetry if the OS lets me get work and entertainment done. I can't live with a GNU/Neckbeard OS where basic stuff doesn't work properly and makes my life hell.
>I'd rather have screen tearing than telemetry and ads, and if this mythical "average user" feels the opposite way, I'd wager say that's a user failure, not an OS failure.
I feel the opposite. I need a sane, humane OS first, that actually gets the basics right so I can get work/play done and get on with my life. What good is the lack of telemetry if the screen tears and everything is blurry, or too small, or too big due to lack of fractional scaling? Now you're damaging your eyesight but at least you don't have telemetry.
At least telemetry doesn't damage my eyesight like Linux can, and if you think your eyes are less valuable than telemetry, than I think that's a user failure, not an OS failure.
> here could be for me as an average end user I don't care that
What you don't care about doesn't change the fact that it's a real distinction. Being used to being locked to one choice because Microsoft says so doesn't mean that someone's ignorance about what an operating system is, and what its graphical interface is, makes them the same thing.
I'm not moving the goalpost, I asked you a question, and you can't seem to give an answer, probably because you know that to perform such a simple task, I'd need to modify registry keys.
My OS lets me work, get entertainment, and does not have telemetry or ads. And my eyesight is not damaged by the god awful imposed visual choices that microsoft makes.
I'm late in responding to this, but I just use vanilla Gnome and have never had any issues. My work laptop is a P15v Thinkpad. All I do is plug it into my 32in monitor via usb-c and everything works as expected. Maybe my company's IT guys are just really on it? I have no problems screen sharing in google meets, discord, or teams. Battery life I couldn't say, as I'm almost always at my desk with the exception of a couple short trips to the cafe. But on the rare occasion that I am mobile, I don't have any issues with my touchpad or anything else, at least that I've noticed.
Yeah I like KDE more, but switching to KDE doesn't fix the lack of out of the box HW acceleration in browser for video playback. It doesn't fix the lack of hibernate support. It doesn't fix the Wayland/X11 compromises. It doesn't fix the battery life. It doesn't fix the touchpad gestures(Gnome is better here). It doesn't (fully) fix fractional scaling (still better than Gnome but far from the perfection of Windows). And it's still janky/buggy from time to time, once you get over the honeymoon period, compared to the stability of the Windows DE.
Even if we just look at it from a hedonistic perspective. I play games to be happy and destress. Windows' abusiveness and anticheat software make me unhappy and/or stressed. For pure hedonism I'm better off with Proton and a smaller selection of games.
My friends and I live all around the US. The one game we all play together has anticheat. It also happens to be cross platform and they are on console. As far as being happy - being able to cross play with my buds and voice chat while we are thousands of miles apart is well worth it.
If you want first-class Office interop, or require industry-specific tools, you're on Windows. Next closest is Mac, and that's not a substitute for a PC for a vast number of people (not least because they're so expensive.)
Edit: When I started writing the response, parent had no replies. I didn't mean to dogpile.
I tried to use Linux on my desktop for a year but ended up switching back to Windows for various reasons:
- Work apps that weren't compatible
- Awful screen tearing issues
- Bluetooth dropping out (mouse) and glitching (audio) all the time
- Games didn't work (and you can't screenshare with audio on Linux in Discord)
I'm sure I could have fixed these but after getting to the third page of Google looking how to solve a problem it was just easier to go back to Windows which I've (touch wood) never had stability problems with, it just works. I've never had it automatically update in the middle of the day, install apps that I didn't want by itself or delete any of my files.
It's truly incredible how we as humans can exist in the same world but have entirely different experiences. I never had the issues you listed in Linux, and my experience has been mostly stable (not saying no bugs, all software has bugs in 2023). But, oh my god, the few times I used Windows, I was continuously tortured by the unbelievable instability. On my Thinkpad X1 Carbon, Windows still displays the wrong time with Google searches leading to no solution. I used Windows for very specific reasons and I was hit with "hooly crap never fucking again". Now, if I need to use a program that doesn't work in WINE, I just explain to the person "I'm unable to do that because I have no interest in working with Windows". Recently, the US tax CPA I'm working with asked me to use a program to sign something that only works in Windows. After telling that, they insisted I must otherwise they can't file my taxes, so I had to say "no, I'm unable to use Windows, I have no access to it", so they found another way to do it.
It boggles my mind how someone can have the opposite experience.
>On my Thinkpad X1 Carbon, Windows still displays the wrong time with Google searches leading to no solution.
Were you dual booting Windows and Linux?
Linux assumes and sets the system clock to UTC, while Windows assumes and sets the system clock to local timezone. This quite often leads to one of the two incorrectly determining the time because of an incorrect assumption.
As for my personal experience, Linux is cursed. The thing breaks down if I so much as look at it weird; I don't trust anything mission critical to it anymore.
Windows, besides being practical and versatile and customizable, has been a paragon of reliability for me. Even Windows ME performed admirably for me way back in the day; no, I'm not joking.
> Not many people use this excuse, but I'm honestly too old to give a shit about any other OS. lol I'm gonna die using windows and that's alright.
It's actually ^this^ perspective that most fits the "daytime television" analogy. The old fogies have precisely that attitude, and they're primarily who still watch daytime TV.
Now that most of the population aims their eyeballs at something other than TV, TV has become a wasteland of geriatric-targeted ads/political propaganda (old people vote) with a pittance of content mixed in. It's being stripped clean of what flesh remains, in its final death throes until its remaining viewers completely die off.
MS Windows is on the same trajectory, which started with MS failing to get Windows on smartphones. Now that so many grow up using non-Windows mobile devices instead of home PCs, Windows will only become increasingly desperate, dated, and tasteless in its revenue/power-generating schemes.
Hopefully FLOSS can prove more robust against this cycle... It's not like we don't see similar patterns emerging with Mozilla embedding ads/"suggestions" in Firefox tabs, or Canonical putting ads in Ubuntu. But at least there will always be alternatives thanks to the ability to fork and compete when the source is available.
Maybe for individual/home/personal use but Microsoft rules the enterprise. It is easier to find IT admins who can manage a fleet of Windows boxes than MacOS/Linux. There is also a whole ecosystem around the use of MS Office tools.
The sunken cost fallacy applies IMHO, but too many corporate IT managers just assume Windows systems and Windows AD is the the only way to manage a large set of corporate users.
I just want an OS where; out of the box, I can play any game made in the last 20 years, change my mouse scroll speed, or set my background to a solid color.
You can do all of those in Linux. For example, here's how to set the background to a solid color. Open a terminal and type the following four commands:
gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.background picture-options 'none'
gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.background primary-color '#004000'
gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.background secondary-color '#306030'
gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.background color-shading-type 'vertical'
Exactly. Where everything I need to do requires a cryptic command to pull off. What args do I need? Where? Oh shit a capital letter. Try again. I don't want to have to Google everything I need to do. Maybe voice enabled GPT-4 will help.
Sure, and I'm personally fine with it. I'm one of those kooks at work who requested a Linux workstation, much to the chagrin of the IT department.
But as long as there is a conversation between Windows and Linux that includes using the terminal, you've lost the "normie" segment of the population, which is going to preclude most people from even considering it.
This fact is invariably met with much wailing and gnashing of teeth by Linux bros who think that there's no problem at all with it.
I did this on Windows too. Why even bother giving someone "click here then here the look for this menu on the right" when I can just send them a PowerShell script.
"It's not like there aren't better options at your disposal"
For what exactly? For many, many things, windows is your ONLY option. Switching to Linux or Apple would mean kissing away so much software availability.
Also a good point. My family desktop isn't quite grandfather's axe but it would be wasteful to just dump it, and if I convert it to Linux some of the games my wife and kids want to play can't follow.
I would love to be running Mac or Linux, but the accessibility story for both of those is pretty dire. I have to have voice/eye tracker input, Dragon only works on Windows, and the other options are hobbyist quality at best.
In a lot of industries, there really aren't, unfortunately. Sure, there are other options in some cases, but they come at the expense of productivity, so they're not really better.
It's outrageous that once a great OS builder, is now resorting to pushing it's subscription services through it's OS. Imagine MacOS and iOS showing in menu ads, I hope Apple never stoops to this level.
In my day-to-day usage, ads in the core user interface in iOS are worse than in Windows.
Windows ads can be disabled pretty easily.
iOS App Store ads cannot be disabled at all and are often for utter trash.
The Microsoft Store is entirely optional, and app installs/updates can be entirely handled via winget/chocolatey (or installs in some other form). The iOS App Store cannot be avoided for installing apps or for manually updating apps, and its ads are more akin to forced ads in the Windows Update settings pane.
I occasionally see a small ad near the top of "Settings", usually for an Apple service. I don't recall ads on the home page or lock screen, or in the main Apple apps I use (Camera, Photos, Files, Health, Fitness, Watch).
Well on my work Mac I'm not signed into iCloud, and there's a permanent red notification dot, just as prominent as if I had an important system update waiting, begging me to create an account.
The only time you get those notifications is generally when you install a new os version and they want to tell you about a new feature. That feature might be 'hey we launched apple news that you can pay for'. The only other time is when you are close to your apple cloud limit it will tell you that you can subscribe to more space.
I consider the App Store in iOS part of the core user interface. (As mentioned in my top-level comment, apps can't be installed or manually updated without using the App Store.)
You don’t get to change the definition of words just because it fits your argument better. App Store is not the core user interface , it’s a separate app. There’s no reason to go into the iOS App Store unless you want to install something new. Updates are installed automatically so you never need to see those ads. Core user interface would be things like the Home Screen, Settings icon, etc. (and yes, the badges in Settings do qualify as ads and that would have been a stronger argument). You could also argue about all the fake apps in the store, etc., but again that’s not part of the core OS, which is the topic here.
There are certainly things to complain about on iOS, but in this case you’re just inventing a non-issue.
I find this response kind of puzzling. I'm telling you about my subjective use of iOS. As far as I'm concerned, the App Store is a core part of iOS. iOS isn't a useful OS without the App Store. I can't install apps or manually update them without seeing ads. It's not really a matter of definitions, it's simply a matter of how I use iOS.
I've prefaced all my comments on this subject by pointing out that I'm describing my experience. And in my experience, despite my best effort to avoid ads, I'm forced to see more (and lower quality) ads on iOS than I am on Windows.
This topic is not about ads in app stores, it’s about ads in unavoidable interfaces that you must interact with on a daily basis, like the Start Menu, security icons, explorer windows, etc. the App Store in iOS can easily be moved into a folder and never looked at again unless you want to install a new app.
Nobody is saying the App Store ads aren’t annoying, but I am saying that it’s nowhere near the same level of intrusiveness as these Windows changes, because you can easily avoid the App Store, and when you do open it you know what to expect.
I understand what this topic is about; the App Store is an unavoidable interface that I have to regularly interact with.
I would love it if Apple provided an alternate method to install and update apps on iOS that didn’t involve the App Store.
The relative intrusiveness of start menu ads is, for me, much lower than the App Store ads, as the start menu ads (and its connectivity to the web in general) can easily be toggled off.
I mean, that’s basically just a judgement call of how many users leave their start menu ads enabled. Obviously if you leave them enabled you’re going to find them more intrusive than App Store ads, and if you disable them you’re going to find them less intrusive than App Store ads.
2. Even if it was, it's reasonable to see ads in a _store_. It's somewhere you go specifically in order to buy things and see companies' offerings. It's in the name -- a store. Like others have pointed out, no other portions of the OOB experience have ads.
Those points are both matters of opinion, with which I do not agree.
(The first one doesn't particularly matter, because I'm forced to use the iOS App Store regardless of how you classify it, the second of which I forcefully disagree with - I am opposed to any ads that I cannot opt out of seeing. I don't go to the store to see ads, I go to download exactly the apps I want, and to update apps I already have installed - in both of those situations ads are unavoidable.)
(And other portions of the OOB experience do have ads - as noted in my link, both the News and Stock apps, although I don't use either. And apparently soon the Maps app if it doesn't have ads already.)
So in your opinion seeing an advertisement for an app on an app store is much worse than seeing an ad in your app launcher UI that you click on every time you go to launch an app?
Devoid of additional context, the latter would be worse, but in this context, I cannot avoid the former while using iOS, while I pretty easily avoid the latter while using Windows. (At least, to date. I don't run preview/insider builds of Windows.)
Maybe there's some MDM that can be practically used to manage personal/household iOS app installs without the App Store? Happy to take suggestions there.
When were they ever a great OS builder? It was always mediocre at best, and that not very often.
For many years, I had hoped they'd pull an apple and run linux under the hood with a graphic shell that made it look like Windows. But times have moved on, and it will never again be an important enough product for them to fix in that manner now.
I'm not a Windows user anymore, but I think you're selling them short. Windows has been a very good OS for 20+ years. If you think it's bad now, you should have seen it during the Windows 95/98/ME era. Around 2000-ish, they started getting serious about security and they began the conversion of their mainstream OS to the NT kernel. Since then it's been rock solid and the backwards compatibility is second to none.
It's really just the shitty UI more than anything else. The ads and paid placement are an embarrassment, and they still have an inconsistent UI going back to Windows 8. I guess you could throw in telemetry too.
I have just as many gripes about MacOS - probably more. I have really disliked that OS for several years now. I feel like I have to conform to it rather than have it work for me.
These days, I'm a happy Linux user. It's not perfect, but it's the best of the big 3 for me.
The shitty UI, the lack of a tolerable shell (Powershell isn't). It's difficult to get a clear picture of what processes are running if it starts behaving sketchy.
These things make it mediocre. Sure, it's not the dumpsterfire filled with radioactive cobalt that it was back in 1995 or so when I started using it... but if that's the best it can say, it's sort of like Cleveland's "At least we're not Detroit!" tourism campaign.
> I have just as many gripes about MacOS
Me too, as far as that goes. Not a fanboy. But it's tolerable, and I'm mostly too lazy to get a linux install up to a point where it wouldn't make me want to tear my hair out. If someone could do that for me, I'd definitely like it better than Mac. Just too far down the list of priorities for me I guess.
Every time Microsoft does something (e.g. WSL2) that makes me think "maybe using Windows wouldn't be so bad" they counter with something that really puts me off (e.g. Ads in Windows, constantly trying to shove their browser down my throat, etc.).
Hot take: We're nearing the peak size of corporations, and in 20 years the average corporation will be smaller, rather than larger. There's a simple reason. The reason Microsoft is doing stuff like this is because they're absolutely enormous. They have baseline costs in the tens of billions of dollars. You simply can't recoup that with individual product releases, where even a breakaway hit would cover a fraction of your costs for a single year. You need rent, and so they're rent seeking in every possible endeavor. And many other companies are in the exact same boat.
But both advertising and direct rent (e.g. pay us $10/month for your OS license) have theoretic limits. $10/month sounds awesome (from both a creator and consumer perspective) for a product that might have otherwise cost hundreds of dollars, until you get into the domain of a million companies doing the exact same thing. $10/month * n subscriptions becomes unviable at some point, and probably a relatively low point for the vast majority of people. It's kind of similar to what happened to Netflix. As more Netflix competitors emerged (and Netflix itself began to struggle), the cost to simply watch what you want skyrocketed, and consequently - so did 'piracy.'
And similarly with advertising. People can only physically watch so many ads. And for every advertised product, the value of advertising for a new company becomes relatively less. In other words if you're the only person advertising, in existence, everybody's going to know about you. If there are a million comparable products being advertised, then even a large advertising budget may yield negligible returns.
It's a tragedy of the commons, or more precisely - of the commoner.
Surely they make a ton from their cloud services. I wouldn't think they needed to make more money from Windows over and above the license fees. This is more likely revenue optimization.
Good. Please expedite the fall of Windows. It’s slow, bloated, buggy, and sounds like it’s about to become more so.
I know it isn’t feasible for non-tech folks, but I haven’t looked back once since I left Windows for good. I haven’t touched a Windows PC since I left my last job last year, and I couldn’t be happier.
I got served malware on APNews.com from an ad. Twice... from the Associated Press Website. And thats when I regretfuly had to turn on my adblocker there.
Now hopefully they aren't 3rd party JavaScript ads (yet), but I still dont like the security implications of this.
And most distributions have the permissions structure of, well, 1980's Unix.
I know it's being worked on, but it's a little crazy to think that on most Linux systems you still don't get a permissions popup when your calculator app wants to turn on your microphone. You can't grant access to your contacts or email on an app-by-app basis.
I say most because it has been largely solved on Android, for example.
You can use Flatpaks to basically solve this issue. Most applications nowadays are already available as Flatpaks, the ones that aren't probably have been reviewed by your distribution. Stick to official repositories and there shouldn't be any worries really. Of course for the average user this kind of discipline might be impossible, but for power-users out there: https://firejail.wordpress.com/
You could also play a bit with writing SELinux or AppArmor policies, although I grant that most people don't give a fuck and just want to get their computing done.
Opting for a Wayland-compliant display server instead of XOrg will also provide you with similar benefits such as preventing applications from capturing your key-presses without you knowing or recording your screen without your permission.
edit: I have no idea how I forgot about this, but immutable file systems are a thing now and they work pretty well, you can go for something such as Fedora Kinoite [0], Fedora Silverblue [1][2], OpenSUSE MicroOS [3], or VanillaOS [4] where all applications you install will be Flatpaks.
Flatpaks support this through XDG Portals, and Flatpaks are cross-distribution. They aren't the native build artifact of most applications though, and are packaged by the community.
What's the best distribution to get "all your modern hardware works out of the box" alongside KDE (which I like a lot better than GNOME or Cinnamon)?
I used Linux Mint, added KDE, but had issues[0] that were showstoppers. Everyone blamed my Nvidia GPU, but that's what my laptop has and it would be very expensive to replace with a comparable all-AMD gaming laptop.
As a "non-expert" Linux user, deciphering the distribution decoder cards has been difficult. Maybe I want newer kernels for better hardware support, but rolling releases mean dealing with more bugs?
Are fonts still ugly as sin? That was the biggest drawback last time I tried linux as my main desktop. That and having to muck around in config files for every little thing.
The font situation is (in my opinion) fixed -- but this is more about the DE than Linux itself, so may depend on which DE you choose. And you haven't had to muck around in config files for a very long time (unless you're doing something exotic).
Depends on when you tried it and what you mean by them being ugly. I personally prefer fonts and font rendering in GNOME over Windows nowadays, specially in high-ish dpi displays. I haven't opened a single config file since installing Fedora on my machine last year (except for vimrc, emacs.d, etc.), although if you are a power user you might have to play with some CLI once in a while. Selection of distribution and desktop environment is everything, it makes or breaks your Linux experience so take a look around and maybe live boot one through a USB drive to see if ticks your fancies.
I wish I could find a screenshot of it, but I believe the default Arabic font in Ubuntu ~10 years ago was pretty horrendous, whereas Windows had a much more reasonable one.
I use linux mint and everything works like a charm. Fonts are cool too in KDE. You can download macos fonts as well from apple’s website. It really has come a long way. I am amazed by it.
Correct but thats not linux that’s the app vendors. There are web based alternatives for some and considering webgpu is becoming a thing there will more available in the browser soon.
The apps are the ecosystem. If people can't run the programs they need to actually do things with their computers, then all the technical benefits in the world are useless. It was the biggest problem 20 years ago with Linux, and is the biggest problem now.
Not ideal but my dual alienware setup looks stunning. A lot better than the ugly windows desktop i used to play games on and a lot more permissive than a mac.
They do. I use Linux exclusively recently and in the last year I played:
- Slime Rancher
- Stanley Parable
- Fallout 3, New Vegas, 4
- The Forest
- Counter Strike
- Heavily modded Minecraft
- Arma 3
- Insurgency
- Insurgency: Sandstorm
- Squad
- Red Dead Redemption 2
- The Witcher 3
- Kerbal Space Program
- Papers, Please
- DOOM
- My Summer Car
- Portal 2
- Others I don't remember
The number of games that don't work on Linux is shrinking every day, DXVK and Wine are getting way too good. Take a look at proton DB for reference on compatibility [0]. You can input your Steam profile and it will show you how many of your games are playable and in what state. Currently in the Top 100 played games on Steam 78% of them are rated either Platinum or Gold. In the top 1000 that drops a bit to 75%, with only 3% of them being unplayable.
Oh yeah and all the games I've listed I played on Wayland (except the competitive shooters) :)
I play on my desktop and laptop and all my steam games run well, battle.net too. EA is the only that sucks. Cyberpunk, and other demanding titles. Really, not a single issue. I wanted to try linux as a desktop a few times but now it’s finally rather stable.
Windows won't get better as long as their consumer unfriendly behaviour has no effect on sales.
The EU (or some other authority) should force Windows licenses to be a separate purchase. The machines could still come with Windows preloaded, but then require a license key to unlock.
It would open the doors for competition and force MS to make Windows a compelling product that users would want to pay for.
> Windows won't get better as long as their consumer unfriendly behaviour has no effect on sales.
I agree. And MS agrees too - which is why they do the bundling thing with new computers, deals for schools, bribes for governments, and making their moat as wide as they can.
The EU already does a funny thing with the licenses too. They come with the computer yes, but they are not married like how they are in the US. They are legally required to be able to be separated after purchase. So, the second hand market is full of licenses like this - you can pick up a Win 10 for $7, Office 2019 for $11, and so on.
If you've been following Windows 11 since the first leaks, you'll know that during beta testing, a glitch on the server side that Microsoft used to deliver ads to Windows made the shell unresponsive. Ads in Windows 11 aren't just an eyesore, they're also a source of glitches.
99% of my problems with Windows 10 and 11 ended up the moment I install simplewall. Nowadays they even have option to block future updates. Kudos to Henry for a great piece of software, as I do donate $100 once a year for all the time he saved me on dealing with BS operating system. (totally unrelated and don't know him)
one more tip re W11: when you installing fresh copy, go for offline option (no MS account) - you can find online manual on how to enable it. Your Windows will look totally different and work faster if you go with offline version (MS assumes its a computer without network access)
Microsoft Edge just created a logged-in profile on my machine for the second time. I'm not even sure how - maybe it's because I logged into Bing to play with their chat? I'm on a Windows 10 Local account and this is getting old.
EDIT, think I finally found out the option under Profile Preferences:
"Automatic sign in on Microsoft Edge
If you're not signed in currently on Microsoft Edge, we'll automatically sign you in by using your sign in info from other Microsoft sites like Outlook."
I actually bought Start 11 because of how annoying the default Windows 11 start menu was. This marks the first time I've ever bought software. Good work Microsoft.
I obtained copies of Windows through some University thing with Windows Vista and Windows 7 and then those keys have somehow just worked up until Windows 10 and then they gave me Windows 11 upgrade for free. In case you were wondering how I have not ever paid for Windows.
How well-supported is it? Looks like the last release was almost a year ago.
Replacing the Windows shell, especially in Windows 10/11, with their constant updates, isn't something I'd recommend for non-experts, but I don't even do it myself anymore because it seems like none of the replacements are ever consistently supported in the long term.
Open Shell has been around for a long time -- it's basically done so it doesn't need many updates. That being said, it actually isn't designed to work with Windows 11 (as the entire Taskbar has been re-written) but it does it actually work with it. Requires some extra customization of the settings to get it to look right.
This is my experience too. I've been using Classic Shell and then Open-Shell on Win10 at work for years. I was using Classic Shell on Windows 7 before that.
It seems to just work for me. I've had no problems.
I have a little nuc-style Windows 11 box for my TV, and I'd say we're in the typical "wait to update" period with Windows 11.
Microsoft always introduces unwanted changes (Vista bling and lag, the entire Windows 8 desktop, the dumbed-down Windows 11 start menu), and then reworks the system to produce a compromise that institutions, businesses and conservative users can tolerate. Just the other day, I noticed the return of task manager access from the taskbar.
By the time I adopt Windows 11 for work, I suspect that the worst design changes should be fixed and the third-party add-ons should work perfectly. That's been my experience in the past.
protip: turn off JavaScript and whitelist it only on the sites you absolutely trust. Irritations like those will disappear completely, as will a huge chunk of your attack surface.
That's how the UI usually works, but there's never not been a registry setting that disables undesirable behavior like this in Windows. Hoping that continues to be the case. There's no OS that doesn't make me jump through hoops to get it in an acceptable state.
I abandoned Windows on my own machines over 20 years ago. Sadly, however, I'm still forced to use it at work. If I could abandon it there, too, I would in a heartbeat.
I left at Windows 7, Microsoft's last good operating system.
Amusingly, I have a product which runs on Windows. I develop it on Linux, cross-compile in Rust, and test and package using Wine. Works fine, with no need to run Windows myself.
Now if I can get the cross-compile to work for MacOS...
I recently bought a MacBook for myself, moving from Linux because it was a pain to manage with the amount of time I have to manage it (zero). My wife also got the same model, moving from Windows because of 11 being shitty.
Where MS has changed the Windows UI look and flow a million times since I started using it with Windows 3.0 or so, I still recognize extremely similar or exactly the same UI on my MacBook as on a MacBook I owned in 2013, and on the Macs I used as a kid in like 1990! It's absolutely awesome that the UI is improved, but the same-ish.
It's important to me the distinction that it's ads for Microsoft services. I dislike that as much as anyone else who hates ads, but it is distinctly different than just general advertising.
It is still mental and visual pollution. I switched from Windows to MacOS 2 years ago after being a long Windows holdout and damn, MacOS is nice and the Mx series of CPUs/GPUs are also incredibly fine.
Apple’s products aren’t perfect at this either, but they’re at least much easier to control. You basically just have to disable notification permission for TV. News is spammy also, but not strictly advertising Apple’s junk, it’s just regular attention spam.
Meanwhile in the App Store guidelines:
> 4.5.4 Push Notifications must not be required for the app to function, and should not be used to send sensitive personal or confidential information. Push Notifications should not be used for promotions or direct marketing purposes unless customers have explicitly opted in to receive them via consent language displayed in your app’s UI, and you provide a method in your app for a user to opt out from receiving such messages. Abuse of these services may result in revocation of your privileges.
Not a great look, and it tells you that Apple is willing to compromise on their principles to make a buck. Here’s hoping your privacy isn’t worth selling out too.
Windows is cramming their tabloid-news-by-MSN into the operating system in multiple places and making it a lot harder to get rid of, so for now macOS is still the better of the two. But I‘m not happy with either of them.
Yea I found android better at preventing ads, when I switched to an iPhone I noted that policy and was relieved that I wouldn't be bothered with ads again; only to find that most apps for retail stores still send me coupons and deals with zero way to turn them off, android has granular notification settings so I could turn "promotions" off but keep "order notifications" on, meanwhile that isn't there on ios and most apps don't have settings for that inside them either.
I will also note that whenever an app would't provide the option to turn off promotions on my android i'd just make buzzkill filter to only allow notifications with the word "order" meanwhile any functionality like that wouldn't be possible on ios, i cant even change the notification noise for most apps!
> Not a great look, and it tells you that Apple is willing to compromise on their principles to make a buck.
I think they're holding a good balance here. For example, I do enjoy an alert from the burger slinger down the road when they put up a sale - but I had the choice between opting in or not.
Meanwhile, on Android you don't have the choice, all you can do is mute notifications from that app in the future (and lose out on important notifications) or remove it entirely.
If TV wanted to send notifications for new things that I have access to, that could be helpful. Like the “New music from artists you follow” that Music does. Sending notifications for things that require you to sign up for a subscription is unsolicited marketing and I’d rather they didn’t spam notifications for that, in accordance with the policies that they make everyone else on their platform follow.
One thing I wish Apple would copy from Android is having apps categorize their different types of notifications and let you turn them on and off individually. And then enforce that in the App Store review. I don’t need Uber to send me Uber Eats offers, but I don’t want to block useful notifications by turning all of them off.
They recently added a “time sensitive” categorization that you can let break through Focus Mode rules, but IMO that’s not granular enough.
Pollution is a nice way to put it. I prefer phrases such as 'cognitive assault', 'mental violence' and 'attention rape'. I really hate advertisement in all forms.
I installed Windows on my Steam Deck to run some games a couple weeks ago. It came pre-loaded with tons of apps I didn’t request, and basic functionality that required me to sign in with an account. What a joke of an OS. I gave up, no game was worth the hassle.
I moved my whole family to Mac OS years ago. I primarily run Mac OS, But I keep a couple windows machines around just to stay familiar with the OS. I think I will switch my gaming desktop over to Linux at this point.
I actually enjoy Microsofts other products like VS Code, Xbox, Etc. But Windows has never been my favorite OS, and now I actually dislike using it.
Sometimes I feel so damn lucky that I use an OS like FreeBSD (or alternatively GNU/Linux when working) where literally
nothing gets in your way. It's ridiculous that a paying product stamps ads in front of your face just like that.
I really feel sorry for the people that are not techies that then they just get hit by the next furious wave of ads
when they proceed to browse the web, without installing any browsing counter-measures.
When I go back in time in my mind and remember the old days where I played on Windows 95/98/XP platforms, those were damn clean OSes by today standards. I can't understand how they have gone this way and ruined what is supposed to be their flagship product.
I am already hanging on a thread about the user hostile ignorant practices making Windows acceleratingly worse working with. Introducing advertisements into an expensive, eroding usability, arrogantly formated system may tip me over if adverts are not easily and permanently avoidable. Will I need to give up my job as developer on Windows platform? It does not worth my health the rapidly increasing frustration and anxiety its everyday use causes. I will study the situation very closely and decide upon if I need to seek a different occupation soon. I only have this one life and I do not want to suffer through of it.
I only use it for games, so not paying too much attention. There’re definitely some local content being loaded by default(like news) which by itself is horrible.
This is really easy to fix -- stop using Windows. Microsoft is going to continue pushing the boundaries as long as nothing bad happen to their core business.
Old Microsoft is back, unashamed to aggressively push their own services from a still monopolistic platform. What this tells us is that tech regulation is a joke, fallen asleep.
They were fined for this exact practice a long time ago. To simply do it again in this fearless way is really telling. They're confident that they can get away with it.
Many people here are pointing out "Why would Microsoft do this to their customer base?"
Well it's because they can, and people are not going to do anything about it. Most people don't know about or cant reinstall the OS. So the publics real decision is between an expensive MacBook, or well Windows. To make things worse most people are so used to ads, tracking and other bullshit, this is just par for the course... white noise.
If you really want a change, your going to have to get the major OEMs to start distributing Linux on mass, but you bet that if that ever took off there would be trackers on their distros in a heartbeat.
Microsoft would be wise to focus on quality of service, especially now with their Open AI partnership.
Make me more productive & I'll gladly go find how I can upgrade my Microsoft services when I need to, no ads needed that add negativity to my opinion of Microsoft.
Same with their Bing division, which was mentioned yesterday somewhat on the terrible decision of forcing people to view awful clickbait, low quality news articles. How about find out what someone is interested in first, then show information that is top quality only. Why a company like Microsoft is wanting to hang out in the gutters with low quality journalism stories is beyond me... Is the ad revenue worth tarnishing your brand & pushing people away?
Create value for me & I'll give you way more of my data than I should.
If a 365 subscription is what it takes to never show me ads and just be an operating system, so be it. But it _isn’t_. There is still crapware pre-installed on a ‘pro’ edition. There is still tabloid news pushed in the taskbar for… reasons?
My computer was so old that I was able to log in on a local user account. After I upgraded, I couldnt believe that I had to stay online to use my computer. I messed with some settings and moved on. Then I right clicked and almost had a stroke.
I really really wish Affinity Photo (and publisher and designer) worked ok in Wine. I think maybe they'll work better in a year, but right now you need a patched wine, a chunk of a Windows machine and you still have to out up with crashing.
As soon as most gaming is easy on Linux (which is arguably already the case, although it's still not as brain-dead simple as on Windows), Windows will lose its hegemony. So stuff like this will just accelerate that, which is great.
Do people see Windows as a secure operating system for the purposes of corporate work? Is there a way companies can turn this stuff off so employees don't engage with the content and accidentally give away sensitive information?
I wish there was a linux app as intuitive as Mac os's stock pdf viewer/editor, it's as good as it gets when it comes to signing and reorganising documents
Preview.app! It’s seriously awesome. It’s the one thing I miss when using a flavour of Linux.
You can fill and sign, but also redact (actually removes vectors under the redaction blob), combine multiple PDFs and rearrange pages. Does everything I would ever want to do with a PDF and it’s hidden inside what most people think is just the image viewer.
I have not used Windows at home at all. I always liked Text based interfaces and at home went from DOS/DESQview to UN*X. But these days I have surrendered and use X most of the time.
But I think M/S only cares about Corporate Accounts, which is where the big bucks is. If I remember correctly, Corporate Windows builds do not have any of this crazyness.
So, I guess this is just to squeeze as much as the can from private people and to get private information they can sell.
Due to this, I have recommended my relatives on old Windows machines to move to MACs. I would suggest Linux or a BSD, but I do not need the headache of training/supporting them :)
Friendly reminder that archive.org (amongst other places) has basically every older version of Windows ISOs you can download and try out in a VM to see what the experience was like in the "good old days".
Hot take: it’s not really Microsoft’s fault or responsibility, as there is no Microsoft to be responsible or faulted for this craziness.
It’s one individual (or two? Or a small team, but really not that big of a group) who is rotten to the core and is so career-obsessed they don’t understand that they are making lives of millions of people worse with this, so that they can just show their PowerPoint to higher up.
It is a personal responsibility of a PM / engineer (unlikely) to not come up with this cancer.
The org doesn’t promote PMs who have those ethics, so they never get to make these calls the correct way. The company wants this, long term at least, and select the people that will do it via hiring and promo.
well my point is that nobody can really pin anything on "Microsoft" but surely there are people who chose this kind of approach to advance themselves.
Versus building new tools or experiences, etc. etc.
This is on some specific people's conscience, nobody made them do it in a way an angry tiger makes people try to run away. It was some one or two people's choice.
Were there other people in their place, we would have never had this problem.
This is pretty depressing. I'm pretty involved in the ricing side of the Windows ecosystem[1] and there is a lot of work going on in this space to allow users to get rid of the start bar entirely and replace it with something more functional. I would love for the day when there could just be a user friendly drop-in replacement.
It’s interesting to see adware go from being this undesirable loathed and parasitic thing being covertly installed on a users pc to Microsoft now shipping their own.
Lots of Windows hate on HN this week. It’s largely well deserved.
Unpopular Opinion: I still prefer Windows to both macOS and Linux by an extremely wide margin. For both normal use and development.
I’m extremely annoyed at all of the ad crap. And I probably wouldn’t recommend anything other than an iPad to my mother. But for devs Win11 is honestly somewhere in-between “just fine” and “ pretty good”.
Half the time I use that key to stop my music, teams randomly calls someone.
The play/pause keys should work with any media player, (and might, or might not) but they’re in no way advertising random crap on your face when you’re trying to work.
To anyone who hasn't I highly encourage setting up PiHole. Great for reducing the severity of these sorts of things, and helps to sanitize and clean up your internet.
Don't need to buy a Pi either, it can run on a laptop or desktop just fine.
It's great for catching anything that can't be by an in-browser adblocker, like in the OS or on other devices.
If you don't want to host your own DNS, there are also managed options.
I pay for and use both Eero Secure (intercepts DNS requests sent to non-NextDNS servers) and NextDNS (set on my clients so it's also effective when away from home).
I have no experience with NextDNS, but with PiHole I can say it has been very "set and forget". Logged into the router, set the DNS server IP. Then into Windows to disable IPv6. Now it just runs in the background quietly for years. It can be set up to do updates automatically as well if desired.
I have occasionally disabled it, thinking it may have been the cause of some internet trouble, but so far that's never been true.
> I have occasionally disabled it, thinking it may have been the cause of some internet trouble, but so far that's never been true.
I hear people say this about PiHole all the time but I have a hard time believing it. I run into a couple sites a week that don't work right with Firefox standard privacy settings and UBlock Origin. I certainly don't want to add another troubleshooting step when web sites break.
>"Thinking realistically, every software I use with the notable exception of Windows and DaVinci Resolve switched to a subscription model. If Microsoft doesn't do that and pushes its OneDrive and 365 subs via the task bar every now and then I'm personally okay with that. Better than paying $$$ every month just to use the OS."
OneDrive and Office is the subscription for Windows. Having worked in a repair shop I can tell you that the layperson thinks the OS is synonymous with "their data" and "their applications." If you said to them verbatim that you're "reinstalling their OS", and you give them back a computer with all their "Recently Used" menus empty, missing programs, all default settings, browser favorites are gone, their Outlook PST is missing, and the Office Key you ripped off the machine was an OEM license that won't activate through normal channels: that individual is going to be very cross with you.
Turns out it's really hard to sell retail customers "nothing for something", and to the average person an empty Windows install is useless. Gate their productivity suite (input) and storage (output) behind a subscription, though, and suddenly you have a customer hooked for life.
I've also seen this playout with Apple Users: their iCloud subscription lapses, or their storage on the free tier runs out, and it stops syncing photos and videos. Eventually the phone takes a dive in the ocean, or a toilet, or just dies of old age. The user goes to the Apple store and is emotionally devastated when they sign in to iCloud on their new phone only to find it is missing the last year of their life. Users aren't going to swear off Apple products, the backup and usability story on Android is a nightmare by comparison, they're just going to let the Genius Bar upsell them into the $2.99 protection racket.
---
It's also worth noting that Windows Enterprise is already a subscription. To use Enterprise (GA servicing channel) you need to have an Windows E3/E5 license, or active Software Assurance. The problem is these subscriptions only work because Microsoft has the power to audit VL customers, and those customers tend to have the pockets to pay up remediation or legal fees. _The only reason Windows Home/Pro are not subscriptions is because Microsoft never figured out the economics of auditing retail consumers._
If consumers are leasing their storage and programs from you, though, it turns out you don't need to audit them.
If you need windows for some software, windows works well in a VM, shared folders for data, NO internet connectivity, windows update and windows defender completely deleted (mount the disk in linux and kill the executables). All other uses of windows are insane.
I can't even consider an OS with ads to be a valid candidate. If I have to choose between seeing stupid trash in my OS, or using a half-baked under-linux (which is how I call Mac), then half-baked under-linux it is.
The Steam deck already runs Arch and you can use the thing as a desktop computer, so that OS pretty much is just Linux. Valve has invested a lot to make the ecosystem better and I've little doubt they'll continue to do just that.
I keep on thinking about getting a gaming laptop running Windows in order to occasionally run some Win-only games and programs. This is probably the strongest factor preventing me from doing so.
This makes me thankful that my desktop "isn't able to support" Windows 11 for whatever reason, despite having relatively decent capacity ( i7-6700K CPU @ 4.00GHz, 32gb DDR4).
A few weeks ago I got fed up with Windows 11. I remember I had to unplug my machine from the internet while installing Windows 10, and in a weak moment I must have accepted upgrading to Windows 11.
It was probably bound to happen, because the question kept popping up all innocent looking: "Hey, want to install a security update... and while you're at it, Windows 11?"
Well, back to me being fed up. I've installed Linux (Ubuntu, since it turns out DisplayLink drivers suck on anything else), and I'm quite happy with it. It works and it doesn't brother me too much. I don't see any reason to install Windows again.
Most people will sign up for a Microsoft account, or already have, and so won't even see these ads.
But let's say you use Microsoft Windows, but don't want a Microsoft account. You're going to leave Windows over this? And go where?
Wait, is 2023 the fabled Year of Linux on the Desktop, at long last?
I haven't used Windows in many years, and I'm not trying to defend Microsoft here. Still, the framing of this piece seems silly. Very rarely is any single thing reason enough for the average person to completely switch operating systems. The cost of switching is too high.
Of course! I don't disagree. And yet here we are at 69.43% desktop market share[0] for Windows for March 2023, decades after I started hearing about how this year, for sure, was going to be the Year Of Linux On The Desktop™.
Most people don't seem to be using the best possible desktop experience. Their desktop is decided by an employer, or whatever is pre-installed, or who knows what. But an ad in the start menu doesn't seem like it's likely to budge that number much.
who even uses the start menu. on windows, mac, and linux I basically just hit windows key and type a part of the program name and hit enter, I don't see it. Half the time my start menu is on the monitor that's swapped to my work laptop.
What is Microsoft really thinking here? You have to go out of your way (and probably do a web search) in order to figure out how to install Win 11 without using a Microsoft Account. So those people deliberately chose that -- they didn't avoid the MSA because they were unaware of the benefits, they did it because they were aware of the drawbacks and want to avoid them.
Harassing them seems more likely to make them angry than to make them change their minds.