Every time I search on the start menu there is a web search, impossible to turn off. How is that acceptable?
I install Edge Beta to test something, and the I uninstall it. All of the sudden my search provider in my normal Edge is reset.
And the nagging everywhere. No I don't want 'back-up' my files (OneDrive is not backup, it's sync). And I don't want to be reminded later. I don't want to be reminded ever. All this fuzzy language makes me feel like I'm dealing with a kindergarden teacher addressing his/her pupils.
It's not my computer any more.
Oh, I update a driver. And 2 days later Windows installs an older version. Since when is 6.6.1.40 better than 6.6.1.72? Why would you do that?
Debloat / Software Management: https://github.com/ChrisTitusTech/winutil
Command line software management (Scoop): https://pilabor.com/blog/2021/12/automate-windows-app-setup-...
Comparison (Scoop/Chocolatey/Win-Get): https://daftdev.blog/2024/04/01/chocolatey-vs-scoop-vs-winge...
I would also recommend starship (https://starship.rs/) for your Powershell, which is cross platform and therefore usable for all popular shells. Scoop can also install and manage nerd fonts:
scoop bucket add nerd-fonts
scoop install nerd-fonts/JetBrains-Mono
format="$all\u001b7${fill}$cmd_duration | $time\u001b8"
[fill]
symbol = " "
# right_format = """$cmd_duration$time"""
[username]
show_always = true
format = '[$user[@](red)]($style)'
[hostname]
ssh_only = false
format = "[$ssh_symbol$hostname]($style): "
[time]
disabled = false
format = '[$time]($style)'
[character]
success_symbol = '[>](bold green)'
[git_branch]
format = "[$symbol$branch(:$remote_branch)]($style)"
[cmd_duration]
min_time = 0
format = ' [$duration]($style) '
show_milliseconds = trueI'm also running a number of additional software on mac to make the experience more liveable (Alfred, scroll inverter, ice, rectangle, iterm,...). I think the big companies got to the point where they do the bare minimum for Gene Public to accept the useability, and leave the rest of us with our ### dangling to fill in the gap.
Probably something to do with maximizing profit and minimizing expense?
You can invert “natural scrolling” in the OS (System Preferences / System Settings).
And no, this is not a reason to leave an otherwise perfectly fine job behind.
older jobs let us put whatever on the laptops, and even had hardening scripts if we wanted to use linux. only approved linux was ubuntu, but you could slap mint or other derivatives in there and get away with it / not have concerns.
Or Fedora with KDE.
Starship seems quite promising, this is the first time I'm seeing it. But I'm a bit confused on how it works, can you go into a bit more details?
Can I use starship+ps to get all Unix and git tools or should I stick with my existing workflow with windows git bash?
wsl ls -lsa
wsl cat file.txt
starship init zsh
zmodload zsh/parameter # Needed to access jobstates variable for STARSHIP_JOBS_COUNT
# Defines a function `__starship_get_time` that sets the time since epoch in millis in STARSHIP_CAPTURED_TIME.
if [[ $ZSH_VERSION == ([1-4]*) ]]; then
# ZSH <= 5; Does not have a built-in variable so we will rely on Starship's inbuilt time function.
__starship_get_time() {
STARSHIP_CAPTURED_TIME=$(/home/andreas/bin/starship time)
}
else
zmodload zsh/datetime
zmodload zsh/mathfunc
__starship_get_time() {
(( STARSHIP_CAPTURED_TIME = int(rint(EPOCHREALTIME * 1000)) ))
}
fi
# ...
# ...
i'll admit the object vs text thing is annoying, i feel like bash is more straightforward there, but PS will let you do the same thing eventually.
Instead they re-invented the wheel. It's not a bad wheel, but the wheel is completely different than most people would expected to be and for POSIX enthusiast it just does not feel right.
With wsl or git bash you can do this but it feels slow and clunky most of the time.
also, while the tool is nice, it needs admin permissions to work.
That's not the exclusive problem to Microsoft - it happens all around us within the IT world. The corporations stopped acknowledging the permanent "No" anymore and the actual user choice. It's a plain harassment up until you give up and agree to what you get shoveled with.
Whenever I read comments regarding last two Windows versions and issues people had or have with these, or news about newest Microsoft "ideas" - I ask myself, where the hell are regulators?
We have killed them. If a government tries to do anything against a company that isn't a perfect 1:1 mapping to an explicit thing in the law that they are breaking, the company will sue back and win. And if they try to pass such a law, the biggest companies are powerful enough to get rid of them next term, so they don't even try.
If you want less government interference then less regulatory power will exist.
I love GDPR, yet so many complain about it for cookie banners, which are not even what the law requires: There Is No Cookie Banner Law (https://www.bitecode.dev/p/there-is-no-eu-cookie-banner-law)
You have just been lucky. Nothing more.
A classic case of it doesn't happen on _my computer_ so it must be a lie.
The only issue that is still here would be bing in start search but that's trivial to disable compared to the configurations I had to do on my linux desktops, so while it is bad and shouldn't be a thing I don't see it as a big issue when comparing to linux.
https://blogs.microsoft.com/eupolicy/2024/03/07/microsoft-dm...
The idea was good but the interpretation and implementation of this law failed - the banners, cookies aren't as permanent and universal as browser sending the header.
Yes!? They existed long before GDPR was even passed.
https://www.oo-software.com/en/shutup10
and this free tool took care a lot of painful things in windows
I only use Windows as a game launcher (and I’m still on Windows 10), I don’t understand why anyone would need it anymore except games.
Thanks to Valve/Steam and Heroic (Epic Store client), and a few other handy tools including Valve's Proton (WINE fork) I haven't even needed Windows for games for ages now. I can live without the small handful of Linux-hostile Windows-only games that still won't run due to draconian DRM/AntiCheat, as the vast majority of my Steam library is "Click 'Play' and they just work", for Windows games and the many native Linux games I also have. Same for more'n half of the games I have on Epic (all from their freebie giveaways). The ones that don't work I can live without. Every other thing I want to do on my PC I've found native Linux software for that more than handles the task.
#1: Apple locks you into their ecosystem, and feels even creepier than MS. #2: The Linux distros I've used are designed in a way so you shouldn't have to use the CLI and sudo for normal tasks, but you end up having to anyway in practice. It's a combination of annoying, and I, sooner-or-later, end up in a state where the system is "totaled"; easier to do a clean install than get it working again after the wrong CLI C+P broke something important.
just off the top of my head:
- whoopsie - uploads crashes to canonical
- motd - telemetry and nags
- forced automatic updates
- snaps and other features lots of people don't want, but can't be disabled
- removing the ubuntu-advantage package disables most of the OS
etc..
e.g. I used to install qlplugins on every new macos device as our company bought them. Then one day Apple refused to run any 32-bit library despite the fact that 32 bit code still runs natively on x86-64 chips (this when everything still ran on x86-64 btw).
Designers still ask me: "Hey, how do I see the dimensions of this picture when pressing spacebar to preview it?" And I have to say: "Sorry, Apple said you can't do that anymore".
This is not the same as apple actively forcing you into their ecosystem. This is apple not supporting old technology.
64bit code is the extension, not the base case.
32bit (x86) code just straight up runs on an x86-64 (64-bit) processor.
It's an artificial limitation that just doesn't make sense, and it can also be worse for performance too.
> This is not the same as apple actively forcing you into their ecosystem.
No?
Apple prevents 32bit libraries from running. This effected almost all the common cross-platform layers from running on MacOS.
In a single action, Apple eliminated the libraries that Steam games on MacOS used. Games would now have to be recompiled and were pushed to be downloadable through the Mac App Store, giving Apple their 30% cut.
> This is apple not supporting old technology.
If it's old then apple shouldn't support it? By that logic, we shouldn't be using ints in our code, we should only use 64-bit quaternions.
There is a difference between old and outdated. 32bit code is old. 32bit code is not outdated.
Yes, it limits available jobs and probably doesn't pay any top salaries. But better than selling myself to people I don't respect.
That being said, at a certain scale or type of company centralized management, software support, and security risks mean "allowing" random people to run their own OS becomes difficult and risky. Lots of large older companies probably have proprietary software, too (thankfully more of this is becoming web based).
Yes, in theory linux is more secure and anybody who would want to use it is probably capable of taking care of themselves, but it is probably (at large companies) corporate lawyers and CISOs ruining the fun. And linux can have its own risks and dedicating a team to support (from a security perspective) them isn't economical for the what would be very small user base. Ye old big bank can't and arguably shouldn't allow it without an otherwise good reason.
Another user commented about how it's unreasonable to ask them to run CAD software in a VM, but this is exactly what (some? many?) companies ask programmers to do. It's especially goofy if it's a software company where that development is their core business.
That devs at a company use Windows doesn't mean they're forced to. Often it just means the designers also work on Windows.
Most designers use Figma these days, which has clients for Windows and macOS, and can be used fully in a web browser as well.
In my experience of the rise of macOS among developers, the biggest driving force was mobile app development and mobile web development because Apple refused to provide first party developer tools or emulators usable on other operating systems and made it intentionally difficult to run macOS on non-Apple hardware or in a VM. Previously macOS was largely associated with designers, not developers. This move also started blurring the lines more with designers making the move to development and (to a smaller degree) vice versa.
Development across the board is better on a mac for some / many people.
And you're probably correct that Adobe has a larger share overall, but I would highly doubt that Illustrator or XD are being used more than Figma for UI design these days. Even less so, Photoshop, since it's a raster tool. Adobe was about ready to phase out XD when they were getting ready to purchase Figma.
Figma is free starting off, and their basic plans are extremely affordable compared to anything Adobe offers.
Is that different from the Microsoft engineers you're friends with?
Basically there's no alternative to the Surface Pro or the Asus' Z13 (or even X13), or Lenovo's dual screen or tablet lines that works with Linux.
Incidentally these form factors also doesn't come to macs either.
- Needed a custom kernel to get the pen (or was it touch) working?
- No good note taking applications (eg OneNote competitor)
- Notably latency on the pen.
- The first distro I attempted to install didn't work. (Manjaro?)Apple Silicon has the power envelope advantage, Intel and AMD chips remain faster for those who can deal with the power consumption (under lock when longer battery is really needed, and either be plugged or have a backup battery when going full throttle)
I purchased Alibre Atom3d because it was the only non-subscription affordable package I could find, but it's quite disappointing and won't run in wine anyway due to the licensing rootkit it uses. So I end up using one of the above linux capable tools, depending on the needs of the model. Each one has its strengths and weaknesses and none is satisfying overall. I reach for OnShape for any design that is going to be open source, because it is a pleasure to use (even though it is web-based), but I don't make enough money from CAD to pay for a $1500 annual subscription.
I tried Fusion under Wine and it didn't really work. I haven't tried NX or Solidworks in the last few years.
Works well to disable various telemetry, bloat and other baddies.
I shouldn't have to run on a privacy treadmill to stay in the same place.
as far as powershell scripts; i cant say i am a fan (i do like the potential targeting of offline machines with something like the mentioned website) - but my favorite to date is still: https://github.com/hellzerg/optimizer/
edit: if you end up trying out hellzerg's optimizer: do know that reboot button, once clicked, reboots right meow
Linux software is not immune to frustrating changes
So yeah, Linux is not a refuge either.
No one should have to resort to registry hacking or the many scripts or hacks available to regain control over basic UX, privacy, or usability selections. It is absolutely absurd.
Don't get me wrong, I'm a Linux lover and user, but from an outside perspective Windows registry (a central, structured database of configuration for everything) looks easier.
The big advantage of this is that you can take your local config files and take it to other system. Can you do that with the Windows registry? Ironically, the only way to port settings in Windows is to have a .reg script and execute it, the thing you critisize.
And the Windows registry might be a single centralized config file, but config values are scattered through all the tree, and usually undocumented. E.g. this is a commonly recomended tweak:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop] "UserPreferencesMask"=hex(2):90,12,03,80,10,00,00,00
Can you tell what it does?
I would love a configuration system with centralized database and centralized documentation, but no OS currently seems to be able to achieve that, and Windows' missing documentation appears even worse than obscure but documented config files.
With Windows you have to patch it through the registry (which is not bsckupable config files) to remove ads and other annoying "features".
So the out-of-the-box experience is better with Linux. My mom even understands Linux GUIs better these days than Windows, it's just less bloat and distraction. And for basic apps you don't have to configure anything on the CLI. I recently got a Raspberry PI for my parents to use as a HTPC, installed some basic apps on it, and they can just use it like that.
Registry hacking, with all it's resets and duplicate keys is hard to backup, constantly reverts ( because m$ doesn't believe it to be user editable) and is a pain in the ass to back up and restore.
Oh yes, and is your registry value supposed to be a dword, or something else? No way to tell.
I am not sure why this is. My best guess is it unpleasant to use because now you have two trees. only one has all the nice tooling and the other is sort of second class and can only be accessed via special mechanisms.
1. it was portable 2. it was well documented ( I absolutely hated that I was finding out about some magical way of enabling something by putting magic string somewhere from a magazine ) -- all those options should be available for me to peruse. I am not even suggesting third party software, just Windows.
But I agree, somehow this idea seems better on paper than in practice.
The good thing is that explanations is often a `man` command away, and the location of these files is often listed in the same place. Also general computing is an expert subject. You may as well have a kiosk if you start hiding away capabilities. The expectation to drop to a terminal is often because the terminal is the fastest way to get things done.
You can scroll, use pages, tabs, nested menus, guided wizards, Chrome or VS code style searchable settings lists, buttons which appear or disappear dynamically when necessary.
> where on Windows for years (I have no experience with its new shells) many people would have to load Office, import the text, write a macro, and export back the text.
If you can assume office, why can’t you assume gvim or any other text editor with a gui? And why is text editing your yardstick? At least you can do that with a gui somehow, image processing you can’t do with a cli - yes you can write the code for ffmpeg or graphviz but you can’t see the result without a graphic interface.
Back around 2003 I read in local "Linux Magazine" about some project that tried bringing kind of a registry equivalent to Linux world. Sadly these were Internet caffee times so it was hard to track projects, so I really don't know what happen to it. The closest thing that resembles that idea is dconf.
With Windows nowadays you do all this tweaking or juggling within registry/group policy editor to protect yourself (and of course you do that if you care - majority of people don't) while with Linux I'd say it's more a matter of fine-tuning your distro of choice to your needs.
What config files have you found outside of `/etc` and `~/.config`?
[1] https://knowledge.broadcom.com/external/article/8596/warning...
~/.gitconfig, ~/.bashrc, ~/.bash_profile, ~/.vimrc
~/.ssh/config
~/.gnupg/gpg.conf, ~/.gnupg/gpg-agent.conf
> ~/.ssh/config
> ~/.gnupg/gpg.conf, ~/.gnupg/gpg-agent.conf
None of those settings are going to be edited by a non-technical human, even on Windows.
OTOH, all of those are easier to edit in their respective files than via a registry hack.
…most of which are backed by a man file. I’ll take that over the registry any day.
Now too, for normal computer users who don't want to tweak their operating system and only need basic utilities, and are able to read and follow simple instructions, Linux has long become way more accessible than Windows.
To be frank, I think the only battle-tested reliable ways to make a config language or a set of command line flags easier to use is good, complete documentation, though little things like integration with tab-completion or syntax highlighting can often go a long way too. These exist in almost any commonly used software found on a linux distro and are more than enough for someone willing to actually try stuff, which describes most of the people who can navigate doing anything that's not a default behavior of any OS anyway. Most people seem to have what I can only describe as learned helplessness about computers doing things they don't expect, but to be honest if you put people in an environment where they are motivated and don't feel afraid to mess up (which most educational contexts fail miserably at, both in terms of social norms and systemic incentives), most will actually start to figure stuff out a lot quicker than they expect themselves to. A small portion won't, and unfortunately most social environments are either too rushed or too high-pressure to facilitate this kind of exploration. But if we just accept that people are "non-technical" in the sense of "can't try anything remotely new in order to fix their computer", the only real way to satisfy those users is going to be keeping a system they already know how to use the same, which companies are simply not willing to do
To me, the main difference between open (like linux distros, but there are others) and closed computer operating systems is that the former tends not to tell you "Sit tight and we'll send a company-certified adult to help you" (or sometimes "This is not allowed", or "You need to pay extra for that now"), and the latter, increasingly, wherever possible, makes these the only options available
Linux alternatively uses config files directly meant to be altered by the end user. It's less user-friendly, but better than the registry.
The real crime is having a registry in the first place instead of a .config directory.
Only system config files. I know of no package manager that scans config files in users' home dirs.
Tell that to UX developers. It is the same in web browsers.
Same as chrome with flags.
Good UX means nowadays eat or die.
Like if some drastic new search doesn't appear within a couple years we are talking IT not being able to fix problems anymore
The calculator app is open source so you can see the code here: https://github.com/microsoft/calculator
I'll note that Microsoft's PowerToys run solves this properly, just like MacOS's Spotlight and the built in search on most Linux desktops
Though for now I've just turned that one off as I don't have obvious need for it and haven't looked at what else it might offer. I use PowerToys mainly for FancyZones and plain text paste.
This. Oh my god this.
I'm not sure if it works on Win11, but this was used to disable it in Win10:
REG ADD HKCU\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Search /v BingSearchEnabled /t REG_DWORD /d 0 /f REG ADD HKCU\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Search /v CortanaConsent /t REG_DWORD /d 0 /f
My other comment was not actually about that though. It was about my computer not actually fighting me over random things, such that I have to circumvent normal means like using the Windows Registry to get what I want done. If you get to the point where you're twiddling with Registry values, you have sunken a lot of time into that problem.
Mac, no. It's almost as bad as windows in terms of having to chase perpetual change for no reason.
Linux though? Absolutely. Nothing changes unless I want it to change. Here's an admittedly extreme, but very real example: I build my parents a simplified Linux desktop setup ca.1996 (neither had any computer experience so wanted to keep it very simple).
Today ~28 years later, my remaining parent is using the exact same setup. The last thing you want to impose on a 95 year old with fading vision is an interface change. So it is exactly what it was in 1996. Through several hardware replacements, countless updates and even distro changes, it is still exactly the same.
This is what user-friendly means. I, the user, own the experience. Neither microsoft nor apple are able to respect that.
Thats impressive and something I wouldn't expect to work. Are they running CDE or is there some other desktop environment that was around back then? What distribution are they using now? Do you have to do much configuration to keep the kernel up to date with an old DE?
Currently on debian, don't remember which distros I used initially. Probably started on slackware.
For email, mutt & emacs. Although both are heavily customized to have simple and minimal commands available, so a regular mutt or emacs user would be a bit lost.
I can't stress enough the power of customizable software! The ones on list list (fvwm, mutt, emacs) are prime examples of excellence on this front.
There is nothing worse than "opinionated" software that doesn't allow extensive customization. Even worse, when they change interfaces every time a new PM joins the company. For older people, any change in interface is a huge setback. There is unappreciated value in software than can be fully customized and then left alone.
The one and only change I made to the setup over the years was to remove the connect/disconnect icons for the (dialup) modem when I upgraded them to DSL and even that small change took a months before they stopped asking about it.
The most problematic part of this stack has been the browser, which I can't keep static and has changed a bunch of times in the last ~28 years. To the extent possible I configure the toolbar to be minimal. But the basic functionality of clicking on home button and back button hasn't really changed in the last three decades and that's basically all they need, so it's been manageable.
install basic ubanto and then run that bad boy. walk away for 15 min while it does its thing, and then generally good to go. at that point it's just changing the desktop background and ps1 colors
I hate this as well, same with Spotlight on the Mac. Doesn’t it make sense to look for things on my own device first?
Anyway, here’s a solution I found for Win11:
## Disable web search from run menu
1. Select Start, type regedit.exe and select the Registry Editor to launch it. Accept the UAC prompt that is displayed.
2. Navigate to Computer\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Search
3. Right-click on Search and select New > Dword (32-bit) Value.
4. Name the value BingSearchEnabled.
5. Double-click on the new Dword and set data to 0.
From <https://www.ghacks.net/2021/11/26/how-to-turn-off-search-the...
https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/all/startm...
- the start menu opens but displays only an empty box.
- the start menu opens fine, but application search produces zero results, not even if I type the complete name of the program I ran yesterday.
Yes, when something like this happens I throw my hands up and declare it not-working today. At least Winkey+R works and my most-used programs are pinned to the taskbar anyway.
Most of the time it's fixed after a good night's sleep, other times Windows manages to pull itself together after a few hours. It's usually not a blocker for me, so I don't care enough to keep rebooting my machine in the vain hope that some user action might fix it. It's my employer's machine, so my employer's problem, not mine.
Not the GP, but, yup. Got fixed about 6 months later in a routine update.
Wasn't just the start menu, none of the icons are responsive in the taskbar either, so I couldn't change the volume, or switch networks, etc.[1]
Luckily, for me, Windows is used almost exclusively for unimportant stuff, like games, netflix/disneyplus/prime, surfing, etc.
[1] Not a major issue: all my game (and firefox) shortcuts are on the desktop, my headset has a volume knob and the wifi can be turned off/then on again using the laptop Fn-key (which I only did when it lost a connection once).
Very fitting… both the kindergarten teacher addressing her pupils vs Windows abusing its users have the one thing in common - people who have zero chance of escaping their control and little influence to chamge their situation. In the business world, it’s called a captive market
well, recently, there was a compromised update to a software package and the recommendation was to roll back to a previous version. there are definite times when removing the latest not-so-greatest for a previous version is the best solution. there's no reason to lose the plot in your ranting. you just lose credibility in your arguments at that point
"The US federal Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency has issued a security advisory recommending that the affected devices should roll back to a previous uncompromised version."[0]
[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XZ_Utils_backdoor#Remediation
Disabling autoupdates via Group Policy is supported and won't bork anything.
Ubuntu at least asks if you want to proceed with a package update, you can look at the changelog to see what the update is about, and you can mark packages to be on hold and skipped for updates.
Leave computer idle windows rolls it back in the night to a driver from 2021.
But I don’t know how much credit is due to ongoing config work by central IT versus Microsoft.
Try adding some passes and see.
This is a well-known issue: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/253699496?sortBy=best.
Both before and after I could pull up my other passes easily.
1) WSL2 is fantastic to work. Having various Linux images on my system is nice, this is huge for me alone
2) plenty of things work just better on windows like Docker
3) stuff like power tools is insanely useful
4) monitor, windows and desktop management is very well done in comparison to the mess of MacOS
5) I don't have all these issues the article describes. An automatic update has never broken my computer let alone ruined my flow
6) I don't see these ads, maybe in the start menu there are but I just never use it I have shortcuts
7) MacOS is way more annoying for me. I really dislike the filesystem, the window management, the fact that it will be always a third class citizen to Linux for software development (still have nightmares about installing Haskell and other languages on MacOS), the fact that it keeps resetting the output of my monitors at every sleep
I could provide other reasons but essentially it is way better for me and my use case than alternatives.
Unless I'm using a laptop, there I prefer MacOS for hardware.
And yes, Docker and most other development works better on Linux than any other OS.
Because WSL 2 satisfies all my Linux needs, and yes, it runs Docker perfectly and Windows is a better desktop OS, with more tools and software.
I used to run mint, ubuntu and some others up to Windows 10 I never considered a productive machine on my desktop but this has changed during the last years and Windows is an incredibly productive machine for software development.
Anyway I'm not trying to sell anybody Windows, was just answering a pointless comment like "I don't understand why would anybody use Windows", and I answered that there's plenty of reasons and tools for me, but I ain't gonna die if you force me on other OSs too.
What tools are you using on Windows specifically? Visual Studio, maybe?
I only ask because, other than workflow-specific tooling (Photoshop, etc), no one is creating non-Electron GUIs anymore, and with non-GUIs Windows used to be far behind for Windows-specific software.
We’ve tried windows machines for docker and hit a ton of performance problems that just aren’t there on modern docker for mac.
2) This makes no sense to me. I've run docker on my mac with zero issues, except that the move to apple silicon has caused some disruption for cases where I build and push images locally (99% is done via CI/CD, but there are always exceptions) and I have to specify linux/amd64, which with some tooling is actually quite painful.
3) Yeah, powertools is nice.
4) This is absolutely true. The most recent macos announcement does add some better native window management, but all I really want is to be able to plug in my external monitors and have macos not switch them around half the time. It's frustrating as this used to work until around 2012 or so, and then just broke and was never fixed.
5) I've run into windows updates reverting settings or replacing defaults that point to third parties. To be fair, macos has sometimes done this, too. In particular it used to re-enable siri after every OS point release.
6) The ads are there and (with effort) can be removed. But it's the principle. Some product manager thought that this is a good idea - the good idea being something that's good for microsoft and not the user. This way of thinking can and does lead to rot by a thousand cuts. What's next enabling location tracking for the advertisers, thus making my laptops battery slightly worse? - google did this with android. This way of thinking has been killing google.
7) Most of this is repeating point 4 which I agree with, but its filesystem is just a posix filesystem. Mind you the finder has it's strengths and weaknesses - it took awhile to get used to, but it's never really gotten in my way. Calling macos third class for linux development is just plain incorrect. One of the main reasons MacOS took off when it did is because so many developers moved to it because they could use the same "unix/linux" tools more natively than windows, but didn't have to deal with linux on the desktop. Web developers in particular could easily run apache/php/etc as well as various design tools from Adobe or whoever. I've not seen too many complaints with most languages on it, but I could see more niche ones like Haskell being painful.
> I could provide other reasons but essentially it is way better for me and my use case than alternatives.
This is what ultimately matters. :-)
> Unless I'm using a laptop, there I prefer MacOS for hardware.
Hilariously for me, the one thing that's more painful than anything else when using windows is the poor quality of the bloody trackpads, even on more expensive/premium hardware (I haven't bought a windows laptop since before covid, so maybe this is better now?). Though a close second is having to deal with various pop-ups (from both windows and other software/utilities) that seem to vie for my attention.
YMMV, but this is what I used to disable web search on my Win 11 Pro workstation:
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\Explorer]
"DisableSearchBoxSuggestions"=dword:00000001If gpedit.msc gives you unexpected results (I.e. policies just don’t seem to work) then do two things:
1. gpupdate /force 2. Download the latest ADMX templates; newer versions of Windows often introduce similarly-named - but still distinct - policy templates, for unwanted “features” in older versions, just like Start Menu web-search and forced-restarts for updates.
Lastly, while Windows LTSC is really what Microsoft should make available for everyone, don’t forget that Windows Server is still Windows LTSC too - so if you’re outside the MSDN Subscription Garden-of-Eden, you can still get Windows Server tricked-out as a real LTSC Workstation OS.
But even if you wait a few seconds before confirming, you'll get some garbage like Windows Photos, even though that's literally never been used.
At least the start menu got a lot faster with the net search disabled, but dropping usage based ordering is just another sign that Windows is NOT aimed at power users anymore.
Leave it alone, that's why Windows is breaking for you. You keep fucking with core components. It's not Linux. You can't do that and not suffer consequences.
At least in Europe it did get a proper uninstall a while ago, which proves that it really was just there for promotion.
I'd gladly pay for a version of Windows that just leaves me alone. No I don't want Edge, Bing, a weather snippet, start search, Cortana, forced updates and a regular black pattern maze promising a somehow "improved experience" while trying to force metrics participation down my throat.
But I also don't want Linux, because many tools I rely on (plus games) won't run on it and I don't want a Mac because it's too opinionated. It feels exactly like being stuck in an abusive relationship at this point.
Yes. I don't want it, I don't need it, my OS does not need it to function, I never asked for it and (until the EU forced them to change this) I could not remove it.
> Bloatware really?
Yes, really. "Unwanted software included on a new computer or mobile device by the manufacturer". What in this definition does not apply, according to you?
> What does it bloat?
My OS, duh. It probably does not waste too many resources, as long as I don't engage with it, but the fact that it's there and it was shoved into my face on every explorer window is something worse than spam. It's basically the modern day equivalent of those shitty browser toolbars that some programs used to try to sneak install.
> You can make all of these things disappear
False. I was only able to fully disable OneDrive with registry hacks, before EU forced them to take it out.
So you are telling me, a Windows power user since 3.11, that I should just rtfm?
It's not about being able to turn certain things off, it's about the playbook that Microsoft is following these days, displaying malignant, almost petty behavior, like restoring the Edge shortcut on the desktop after updates.
It's about all the black patterns, like how you need to first go back a page in the post-update maze before you even get the option to continue without attaching a Microsoft account to your OS. Yes, I know that you can turn the maze off, but that option is hidden so far in the settings most users have no idea it even exists.
It's about the fact that they even dared to suggest putting ads in Explorer windows. It's about the clear sensation that my OS is no longer on my side. It's selling out, stabbing me in the back, turning rotten. It's a crying shame, but I may need to take it out to the back of the shed one of these days.
Windows works, and has always worked, just fine without onedrive. Microsoft just doesn’t want you to know that, because they are obsessed with the idea of upselling you on subscription based cloud services.
Unfortunately this is changing in the wrong direction for you or I.
Don’t leave us in the dark. Is that option being removed in the future?
And if you think OneDrive is essential for Windows then I’d suggest you do a little reading on the history of Microsoft and how they falsely claim dependencies on their own software stacks. Especially the court cases around debundling IE4 with Win98, and DR-DOS vs Windows 95.
It's akin to adding webview to your application to display a text file, even though you never would display an HTML file. It could have been done another way, but it wasn't.
So, yeah. If you actually know enough about libcs to want to get rid of glibc for a real reason, you can do it without breaking things. If you just want to go around and start deleting core system dependencies (which I think is very silly to put a cloud storage client in that bucket, regardless of the brand of cloud storage) without replacing them, then chaos seems to be the goal, and maybe order is the "broken" state for that machine :P
Have you considered that maybe not being able to use your computer how your want is precisely why this post exists?
A Dropbox clone is now 'core OS compinents'? That's just as much a valid criticism of Windows as anything else in this thread
What exactly tells you that OneDrive a core component?
Though as an ex-Windows developer and hacker, I can tell you that NT is pretty modular and is designed to be “fucked” with in various different ways. Microsoft just like to ship defaults that are more favourable for their own business than your typical power user.
http://windowscentral.com/software-apps/windows-11/microsoft...
I suppose the problem for many people is that advertisements are now "core components", when they really shouldn't be.
First-party upsells are now core components when they shouldn't be.
Third-party resellers are now core components when they shouldn't be.
Look, I get it: minesweeper is no longer free, and I'm okay with that. But FCOL, now the start button is ad-supported?
None of that stuff is a core component. The only reason any of that stuff is part of windows is because windows is a mature product. And all their desperate product managers need to add stupid features to windows to justify getting promoted.
Maybe I’m just old fashioned, but I don’t use windows because I want to be part of Microsoft’s software empire. I just want an OS that boots fast and lets me play video games. I don’t buy ram from the computer store so some tasteless bozo at Microsoft can justify their 6 figure salary.
Unfortunately just like the original post is anecdotal (I haven't had a machine fail to startup after an update since XP) not all anecdotes are born equal.
Interestingly, I don't see adverts myself, and I've never seen any at work. I -suspect- that's heavily regionalized.
Are there features I don't care for? Sure - I don't use OneDrive, I don't internet search from the Start bar, and I use Edge only occasionally. But it's not like somehow you -have- to use everything they ship.
I get it. An OS is personal. If you don't like Windows, use MacOS or Linux. All 3 have different approaches and one of them will fit you better than the others. Arguing over which is better or worse is like fighting over ice-cream flavors.
Yes there are work arounds, but that’s not for the average user. If I need to start tinkering and hack around in registries I might as well use Linux.
I haven't touched the registry, so that's not in play.
OneDrive doesn't nag me.
As I said earlier this is all anecdotal, clearly your experience is different to mine. This post is just anecdotes, not data, and I'm not suggesting my experience is your experience.
Why do you ask them to remind you? It sounds like you're already set up?
Unless you keep modifying the registry to disable it, you do, every time you do a search. You're just not using those results. But you're still getting the crappy experience of delayed actions when you just want the local results.
After I started administering fleets of Windows machines, I learned that if you don't fuck with it, it's fine!
If you need to make changes, use group policy. Don't like OneDrive? Don't use it! Uninstalling it is going to fuck things up.
Install updates as they come. "But it breaks things!" No it doesn't. It only does if you've fucked your registry to hell.
Just leave things alone and stop trying to customize it like a Linux box is my advice. It is what it is and will work fine if you use it the way it's intended.
OneDrive in the end is a component designed to exfiltrate documents. Wanting to remove a security vulnerability should not brick a device. Asking people to not use it is not a solution because you are prompted to send your documents over the internet to a third party every single time you save a new file.
1. It should not be uninstallable and MS screwed up by making it so.
2. The uninstaller is broken and MS screwed up by making it so.
Either path is MS’s fault, not the user’s.
No, I absolutely want it off my computer. But then I'm not going to bother with weird registry scripts. Windows won't let me easily remove things, so I removed windows.
KB4541335 entered the chat. If you haven't seen a broken vanilla update, you haven't been doing this long enough.
That may be true for work PCs, where my access is already restricted and heavily monitored, but I don't accept that for my personal machine.
<< It's because people fuck with the registry,
Hey, if MS wants to put configs somewhere else that is cool too. I don't understand how it is somehow expected that I don't touch the magic box ( because it is all held by rubber band and glue ). It is not some rinky-dink shop that made its first release. It is a global company. I simply expect more.
<< Install updates as they come.
This is for the user to decide. I am personally livid that windows machines update bios these days without any user interaction. If I ever saw retarded setting just waiting to cause a major issue, this is it.
<< Just leave things alone and stop trying to customize it like a Linux box
I use my Windows instance in a VM so I suppose I technically am leaving it mostly alone, but even then I chose to make some changes to registry to make the access easier for myself.
If I may get a little personal for a moment. I think your professional experience may be clouding your judgment in this case. I see it fairly often across a wide variety of professions, where various representatives consider client/user/buyer a hindrance of sorts that should make their lives easier 'by just doing X'. The thing is, the relationship is really not about making the representative's life easier.
Bonus points: I’m having fun with my computer again!
Gaming is what kept a lot of people on windows over the years, but thanks to valve and the proton team, Linux gaming works as well as Windows gaming (and some people say better than — I certainly don’t have to deal with all the crap Microsoft tries to put into windows).
Some people refuse to use Linux because they’re afraid of having to tinker with it, but that hasn’t been my experience in over a decade. Things have generally just worked for me.
AoE2:DE is one example of incompatibility. Simple game (by modern standards) with no advanced anticheat.
It's been a few months since I played but the only thing that doesn't work is Xbox login. I needed to download a DLL to get multiplayer working, which I agree isn't really userfriendly, but compared to the early Wine days Proton is a walk in the park.
What I do miss a bit is Capturage, apparently it's really hard to make it work in Proton.
It's even been less troublesome than when I used to use AMD GPUs, where IIRC accelerated graphics drivers and the ROCm drivers had some sort of conflict unless installed a certain way (a few years ago now, my last AMD card was a 5700xt).
This is true, but have also improved substantially in the last year or so.
The only problems I’ve had are that the intro video and menu for supreme commander forged alliance runs at very low frame rate (but the actual game runs without problems), and that Gothic 3 was very glitchy on steam deck. Everything else I’ve tried ran without issue.
I haven't tried that game, but I know for a fact that Fallout 4 works quite well, and it -- like Skyrim -- has a gold status on protondb.
There were also some rendering issues, but I could let that slide given my GPU is ~10 years old.
No idea where that came from but it's not the case.
- I download games from gog via linux and put them on an NTFS partition
- I boot windows 11 in a proxmox VM with passthrough gpu + usb controller for sound
- I mount NTFS partition in VM, install and run games
- my windows 11 install has no network device
- tbh there was a windows defender nag, but I managed to disable it.
I've been wondering if I can do something similar for steam, but haven't touched my steam login in 5+ years. I think you can use a proxy for steam.
That monitor, incidentally, is a 25-inch former iMac. I gutted it after it suffered the widespread burned-out-GPU problem that afflicted many (most?) Macs of circa-2010 vintage, and put an LCD driver board in it.
Everything else works well on Linux. Gaming included. I've run Linux many years, in fact.
But Capture One and Lightroom are not available over there, which is what draws me back to MacOS. Of course I could just use darktable. Have done that for several years. But at the end of the day, I just prefer Capture One, and that's enough reason for me to switch my OS.
The few I had a pleasure of using have a really good browser and mobile app support. The only problem I ran into is that sometimes mobile apps refuse to run on rooted Android devices.
The browser will only ever log in to one bank per tab, and with different UI per bank. If you have more than one bank, it becomes a hassle quite quickly.
I have been multi booting for 20 years, preferring Linux distributions the whole time, but other OSes when I want to use them.
I recently started using a dedicated Windows system for gaming and other Windows favored tasks. I am running a KVM switch, using AMD Graphics on a Linux system and Nvidia on this Windows system. I also have a macOS system, that I use as needed.
I do this with mobile devices as well. It doesn't seem worth it to squabble over choosing a path.
But hardware is more affordable than ever (unless you want a really powerful GPU). What's worse is that you have to separate the tasks between OSes, you can't easily have a default computer for everything, with everything relevant locally available. It's fine if you keep Windows for gaming, and want gaming to be explicitly separate. It's harder if you need Windows for graphics / video, or for CAD/CAM, or for Office. Having important related bits and software on another box may be a hassle.
Put all your fun things on one OS (or user account), and all your business stuff on another (possibly blocking distractions via hosts or firewall rules); and you've added a bunch of friction to switching from work to play. Not that it can't be done, but it needs to be a deliberate choice and you can't just bounce between them.
I don't really have a set work schedule, so it's normal for me to jump between a work context and a play context. It's much easier to do by very rarely rebooting my computer (once or twice a month), so I can always pick up where I left off. The regularly scheduled update meetings do a good enough job of keeping procrastination in check.
At least back when win10 was new, Proton is good enough that I haven't needed Windows in a good few years.
For me, there are evenings when I am hacking away on a hobby project for 2 or 3 hours. Then suddenly just go, 'I wanna just veg out for another 2 hours then go to bed.' When I'm in that mood, I don't even want to be bothered changing machines. Just hit the steam icon and veg. Thats also bout the only time I end up gaming though, haha.
Last time I dual booted though, I remember why I didn't for along time. Did a Windows update, windows rebooted my computer and it did something with grub and I couldn't easily boot into linux anymore.
[1] Doesn't work for games requiring kernel-mode anti-cheat.
[2] https://looking-glass.io/ to use both GPUs on the same monitor.
At the start of the pandemic I bought a PC to game on. 16-core Ryzen, 64 gigabytes of ram. I'd been kind of pleasantly surprised with WSL and just general improvements in cohesiveness. It's still got that Windows jank under the hood though.
But then... It won't f**ing run Windows 11 because it doesn't have a TPM. And they pester me about buying a new computer. You have to be kidding me.
It's just absolutely incredible Microsoft decided to declare very powerful machines only a few years old essentially eWaste.
I'm probably going to give Desktop Linux another go, at least for a bit. I have no idea what distro though.
I ran Ubuntu on some of my older machines for a number of years. I actually loved Unity, I still think it was the best Linux desktop and I'm bummed they basically killed it.
I tried Pop_OS! a couple years ago on a MacBook Pro but it just up and imploded on me after a couple days Windows ME style. I've got Elementary OS on an old MacBook and I've had a decent time with it. The apps not made specifically for it though. Felt real out of place.
I'm pretty sure it's fine now with updates applied...
I went and bought a discrete one since my platform was in a weird middle ground. New but not integrated
I don't like macOS, but I'd take it over Windows without much hesitation. MacOS is like an authoritarian but tidy country. Windows is more and more like a corrupt third-world country :(
MacOS:Windows::Singapore:Brazil*
(*The US is probably a better comparison, in all honesty.)
You can keep using Windows 10. The LTSC version will be supported until 2032. Even the regular versions will get (paid) updates probably until 2028.
And while I have enabled the flathub repo, to have more choice over the limited but curated fedora repo, I am a bit wary of the flathub ecosystem as it:
- includes proprietary stuff - a lot of "community build" flatpaks for which it is not obvious in a quick glance who build it exactly? - I don't think the flathub packages are analysed for malwares?
I could see flatpak becoming a source of malware. Sure most flatpaks are setup to be sandboxed and you can fine tune sandboxing but most people would not know about it and a lot of flatpak already have access to your files otherwise they are not usable.
So far I had one problem with a botched nvidia driver update, but with the magic of Timeshift, reverting that was painless, and I could upgrade properly later.
I haven't missed Windows a single time since making the switch.
At the workplace, a large Microsoft shop is buying a complex package of products and services that I can't even identify all of the pieces of. There's Microsoft stuff on my work computer, and on my company supplied iPhone. I must sheepishly confess that it all just works.
For myself at home, my main computer related interest is programming, and a programmer can live a platform-independent life if they want to. This is what I advocate, above and beyond my actual platform preference.
What I suggest to friends if they're thinking of switching (to Linux, Mac, Chrome) is: First, achieve platform-independence by finding the tools that work across OS's. Get up to speed on those tools. Second, switch platforms. That way, you're 99% up to speed before you even switch.
Online tools are already advanced enough for most use case
In the simplist terms, it's a similar reason youtube allows users with ad blockers, those people with ad blockers will still share videos to people without ad blockers.
Very short-sighted move from Microsoft. All of this gain now from ad revenue but long-term damage to the brand.
- "all the people" is probably actually well under 1% of users
- successfully switched all corporate accounts from single-purchase w/ occasional renewal to ongoing monthly subscription
- also a lot of of consumer subscriptions
- Azure
- Github
- OpenAI investment
I actually agree with you that the Windows experience is getting worse, quickly. But on balance, seems more is going right than going wrong.
Another way to put it. People aren't buying Microsoft stock because of Windows. They are buying because of Azure and Office365.
Microsoft can't do that. It's not in their DNA. Every time Microsoft has tried to make something consumer-centric it ended up flopping eventually. Sometimes things lasted a surprisingly long time!
But their consumer-focused stuff like Zune, Xbox, even their keyboards & mice, eventually all kinda lost focus.
Windows mobile was a weird one because they tried to use the same formula they always use - a corporate OS that had all sorts of knobs and buttons for SysAdmins to manage corporate phones. You could join a Windows phone to a domain and manage it.
Xbox was pretty successful for a while because MS just has so much clout with game developers.
Zune flopped HARD. I think the Surface product line has been kinda here and there - a total failure for consumers but some businesses like it... but not many, because most businesses have a relationship with Dell.
I sincerely wish more people were able to enjoy the UX that their clever engineers designed, but I suspect their marketing departments were the downfall of those efforts.
I frankly don't know why anyone who isn't tied to very specific software requirements would ever choose Windows anymore.
I had to replace an aging Pixelbook last year and eventually decided the right decision was to get a Mac. It's stable, the hardware is high quality, it does what it needs to do, most non-enterprise software is available, and the custodian of the operating system isn't licensing my data to 3P advertisers. I almost went Linux -- and have built my own Linux machines dating back about twenty years -- but I just wanted a polished, lightweight laptop I didn't have to worry about. I almost bought a new Chromebook, but the software problem is more acute even if the OS is dead simple, and frankly, the hardware -- ever since the Pixelbook -- has been lacking polish (no matter which OEM you buy from).
Really? The only remnants of Windows Server, that I've seen within the last couple of years, were running Exchange and ActiveDirectory.
Even SQL Server installations are moving to Linux.
As for my traditional Windows 10 machine that I game on, in the near future I'll be switching to the best Linux OS for Steam gaming. Two things made me mad enough to change: Win 11 with it's ads and other BS and I'm tired of transfer of data problems relating to both USB-3 and C plug-ins. I've had some experience with Linux, so the transition isn't a problem.
My Mac, iPhone, and Apple TV are owned by Apple. My Sony TV is owned by Sony and Google. My Windows PC is owned by Microsoft. My Quest 2 is owned by Meta. My Kindle is owned by Amazon.
At best, the Mac and PC I could install Linux on to make them mine. The rest, not so much
I've re-read what you wrote several times, and I can't help but come to the same conclusion that the problem you're reporting is related to "constantly bugging" and "Apple gives you no option to skip the updates". Turning off the updates solves both of these.
Now you say you want the harping, but don't want the automatic updates. That's easy: "Check for updates" is on, "Install macOS updates" is off, "Install Security Responses and system files" is off. Now you'll be alerted but the updates won't happen automatically.
I'm not sure if you really couldn't figure this out, or if you're just venting a bit, so I'm happy to give the benefit of the doubt. Either way, now you'll have exactly what you want :)
It seems like a valid use case (except it goes against Apple's policy of encouraging people to upgrade), but awfully awkward in the context of disputing "(Mac) doesn't bother me for anything and lets me do what I want".
Not a perfect device but good enough that I feel like I own it.
https://www.reddit.com/r/kobo/comments/18yizux/i_finally_cav...
Here's a detailed guide on how to use Tags in Calibre to set up Collections on Kobo. This was the primary reason I bought a Kobo this year. I have over 1k books. They were mostly unsorted on Kindle. Amazon wouldn't let me use Calibre to organize them, and I didn't want to organize them on the device with its slow interface. With Calibre, I just got everything tagged and they were instantly organized upon upload to the Kobo.
https://www.reddit.com/r/kobo/comments/qlgha1/how_to_create_...
If you end up getting a Kobo, make sure you set up the Calibre Kobo plugin to auto convert every book to the kepub format. Just makes things smoother on the ereader and the plugin does it intelligently. Only sending the kepub to the device but preserves disk space by keeping the books on your desktop in their original format. The first link I mentioned links out to a guide on that.
Maybe I'm just ranting, but Ubuntu seems to be by far the most common distro for Windows users, and they're definitely not perfect in this respect. I've been running Linux as my main OS for about 20 years and I can't rid myself of snaps. Synaptic will show that the package provided by Mozilla is the latest version and the snap is the installed version. If I reinstall, it goes back to the Mozilla package, only to mysteriously show the snap is the installed version within a few days.
I don't want to bring up the discussion of the Snap Store again, but this experience is pretty much what you get with Windows, just on a much smaller scale. I'd strongly encourage Windows users to install Mint or some other friendly alternative rather than going with the standard recommendation.
The good news is, as you highlight, today there are quiet a few good distros, some that are not that much more of a hassle then Ubuntu for people to get up and going.
You have one default app that does things one way (say, with a "Save" button, and a nice "Settings successfully changed!" message), and another that does things a totally different way (say, with an auto-save and no message that it's been saved).
Linux respects developers, in that it allows the people who make aspects of Linux to do anything any way they way -- but without consistency of UX, is it really respectful of users? Or does it just leave them at the mercy of the devs who often give the impression that they don't care about the user at all and can't be bothered to build anything consistently, or re-factor old code to bring it up to modern consistencies, or put even show a little empathy for users who aren't also advanced software developers.
Not everyone wants to learn how to build a car just to drive a car.
(Disclosure... My exposure to Linux is running various distributions on my Raspberry Pi side projects... Pi Hole, Retro Gaming, silly home automation toys. I tried to set up my elderly parents with Mint Linux and that was a complete disaster.)
It feels like they don't have UX designers planning the workflows (or even involved). And that's largely because they don't, right? They have developers building some stuff and doing it however they want, and not really following any sort of enforced brand or style guidelines.
Mostly the various Linux distros still feel like "model train sets" -- built by one guy, for one guy to enjoy alone in his basement. It's work to build something as part of a larger team... designers, developers... then you'd need a manager... and probably some sales people to keep it all funded... easier to just avoid all that stuff and build a model train set. (=
Most of the distros don't take kindly to UX people or product people giving suggestions on GitHub, or other places. It's very much a "if you aren't a dev, we don't want your input" type situation. "You don't get to tell us what to build, not here, not outside of work..." and until Linux makes a real effort to include a variety of people (especially designers!) in the build process, the results will always be the same.
As far as my memory and perception of the situation go, there was a time where Ubuntu was #1 on distrowatch and couldn't conceivably be dethroned. Then, they added the spyware in '12 and snaps in '16, neither of which were by any measure without controversy, IMO. (And, spoiler alert -- they have since tumbled down from that position.)
Microsoft is a publicly traded, for-profit company.
Canonical Ltd (Ubuntu) is a privately held, for-profit company.
The Linux Foundation is a 501(c)(6) non-profit organization.
Software in the Public Interest (Debian) is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization.
See the pattern?
By the end, it was like Windows was shoving me into things like OneDrive that I hadn't (at least deliberately) installed, didn't want to use, and didn't understand. This set me up for a risk of breaking things when I'd treat it like the regular Windows filesystem, and eventually I did break Windows and had to reinstall.
I've had none of these problems with Ubuntu. I wouldn't be surprised if alternative Linuxes are even better, but I'm satisfied enough with Ubuntu that trying alternatives isn't a priority.
Those free CDs were incredible in the time of dial-up. This lasted longer than you think for most of America. My rural area and many others didn't get affordable ISDN/DSL/cable until the early 2000s.
Anyway, I didn't stick with them too long. This insistent nature of theirs goes back that long. It was a bit more acceptable, if not something to encourage, given the smaller size of the community.
Fedora/Red Hat are generally, in my opinion, better participants.
That said, with what happened RE: CentOS [releases] to Stream... I truly, honest to goodness, worry for Fedora. It might be next for some other business-minded shenanigans.
Technically/version-wise, whatever - I use Fedora! I'm not worried about new software. Upgrading, especially without testing, isn't compelled.
I'm more worried about new/unfriendly policies to the community; the systems I'm well in control of!
Results in less work and represents the wider ecosystem, too. Canonical does what Canonical wants.
1) Fusion 360 - Just can't get it working under linux well enough. 2) Monitors - Always issues mixing highdpi and low dpi monitors in linux, my main is a 4k 144hz 43", the sides and tops are all 2560x1440 27s. Oh and there's my Ceiling 4k projector which I turn on to watch movies or baseball when I lean back and think. Which leads to the other issue, Nvidia seems to greatly limit the number of outputs you can have under linux compared to windows. With 6 monitors, I've never gotten it to work even with 6 of the same monitor, let alone my messed up setup.
Yes yes, woa was me. I've had linux as a daily driver for at least 10 years of my main computer use since 1998. I do really prefer it but so far just making the tradeoff.
Also I tend to play games that have anti-cheat like CoD / PubG, etc which further locks things out.
I do like the direction things are going
And fwiw, you can make a glossy screen into a matte one with a cover, but you can't make a matte screen into a glossy one the same way. Which may be why Apple makes all their screens glossy.
Fortunately or unfortunately, for most people for most things, the host OS hardly matters anymore. The operating system is now the browser. And this "doesn't feel like mine anymore" is 100x worse there because corporations have fogotten that they're voluntarily presenting data upon the request of an external client and what said client does with the data is none of their business. It's as if visiting a website and downloading the publicly available contents is a nation setting up an embassy of "foreign soil" on your hardware. Editing CSS (or whatever) is equivalent to vandalizing a physical storefront because the pixels on your monitor are theirs not yours despite it being your hardware. Even the very protocol of hypertext transport (HTTP/3) is now designed around being encryption verified JS application delivery for corporate person use cases with no allowances for HTML hypertext transport for human person use cases. So not even linux/mac/bsd/etc is free from the trend.
* Setup started in 100% HiDPI scaling, making everything impossible to read. Every time I ran setup, I had to set it to 200% using display settings before I do anything else.
* Installation software crashed twice mid-installation. I was only able to complete installation on my third attempt.
After the installation, I noticed that Ubuntu doesn’t have the features below out of the box: https://x.com/esesci/status/1803374884858347856?s=46 You either had to go through painful and complicated configuration steps, or install third-party software:
* Hybrid sleep (is a must for laptops).
* Face login.
* Live full disk encryption on demand. I’m actually baffled by this as Bitlocker on Windows makes this trivial. I actually expected FDE to be enabled from the installation by default but I wasn’t even asked.
* Fast fractional scaling on HiDPI displays. 200% is just too big and 100% is too small, and 150% hogs the CPU (or GPU?). As I understand, fast fractional scaling is impossible with Linux because fractional scaling is a bitmap operation while it’s just a rendering parameter on Windows.
* No factory reset. If you ran a script that messed up your system, your only option is to reinstall the OS. The problem with that is, if you had to install it using a very slow USB stick in the first place, a reset operation also becomes a multi-hour operation while Windows could just use its local recovery image to reinstall itself in a much shorter time.
All in all, Ubuntu felt like a huge step back from Windows. I haven’t tried other distros, but I don’t think the difference would be significant for the issues I mentioned.
Yes, I also dislike the features in Windows that inconvenience people, but man, does Linux have a long way to go.
Fingerprint login, graphics scaling, sleep, and everything works out of the box on the Thinkpad I bought for my non-technical GF to run Ubuntu on. (She installed it herself!)
Or, what does my SL3 lack to prevent it from going to hybrid sleep? Doesn’t make sense to me.
With Linux, you are dependent on the community that it made good support for the hardware you're running it on. And unless you're a pro you'll have a very hard time getting to make certain hardware work if it's not well supported.
Therefore you should think about the hardware you buy if you want to run Linux. With Windows you don't have to think about it because most hardware is made to run Windows or it's even already pre-installed. Macs have their own dedicated hardware wirh their OS pre-installed so you also don't have to think about it. But with Linux you suddenly have to consider which hardware to buy. It's something you have to get used to coming from Windows / Mac.
Windows, like every modern operating system 2006 or newer, has a graphics compositor to do basic things like allow GPU-accelerated window stretching, prevent screen tearing, and so on (OS X had one slightly earlier). Meanwhile while Linux has had multiple modern attempts to build a composited graphics stack (Compiz, Wayland) certain very vocal elements of the Linux community complain about any attempt to build a graphical stack you can't send via carrier pigeon and have dragged their feet or otherwise thwarted wide(r) adoption.
On Windows and MacOS and iOS and Android the GUI toolkits are aware of the scaling factor and draw themselves appropriately. It has nothing to do with the compositor.
Some legacy apps on Windows are indeed scaled like you describe, resulting in a blurry mess like on Linux, but they are few and far between.
DWM, Direct2D, Direct Composition, and the fact that major Windows UX frameworks use them does allow significant offloading of drawing to GPU instead of CPU, however.
See https://github.com/linux-surface/linux-surface/wiki/Supporte...
If you are using a recent version of Ubuntu, FDE and HiDPi should not be an issue except for old apps. Factory Reset doesn't exist on most desktop distros but things are moving towards other (and better IMHO) approaches. e.g. Deterministic NixOS or Fedora Atomic Desktops. Hybrid Sleep and Face login is not available OOTB but can be configured. I agree with your remaining points.
You are correct that it's impossible to do after the fact whilst the system is live. LUKS is also not very resilient. Bitlocker stores several copy of its headers in case of sector damage. With luks2 you're SOL.
CAD programs, e.g. SolidWorks, Alibre, SketchUp, eDrawings, Fusion 360? Windows.
CAM programs, e.g. BobCAM, MeshCAM, MasterCAM? Windows.
Office? Windows (LibreOffice is not a functional replacement - you can’t risk having documents being sent to clients looking bad).
FileMaker, Act! Pro, other desktop databases? Windows.
Router control software, e.g. Mach3, Mach4, UCCNC? Windows.
Adobe anything (GIMP is worse than a joke)? Or, if you don’t like Adobe, Affinity? Windows.
No shortage of Windows and Mac only programs in a business. Other than MasterCAM, my family uses or has used every piece of software I just listed in our small business. Linux is not an option; only for home hobbyist use, maybe. If you could get by with a Chromebook, Linux will work for you, otherwise it probably won’t. (This might sound like a slam, but remember Steam also runs on Chromebooks now.)
So I have some terrible news for you about what happens if your client has an older version of Office than you do...
> Office? Windows (LibreOffice is not a functional replacement - you can’t risk having documents being sent to clients looking bad).
What kind of documents are you sending to clients? In my experience I would only share PDFs 99% of the time. So is your concern that the PDF will look unprofessional or that you need to send .docx or .xlsx or .pptx files to clients?
They run on mac
I have a barebones 'just installed' win10 image that I use to clone a new VM for each new app I add. Solidworks, NX, Cadence, Altium and ISE all work fine with no problems because of 3d acceleration or such.
Admitably my impetus for this was conflicting FlexLM emulators cough, but there's no reason it can't work just as a way of keeping things organised and clean on a host OS that isn't windows.
Emphatically, no. Running CAM, or CAD software, in a VM, is almost unusably slow with any large models. I’ve tried. It’s not fun to zoom through a large model at 5 FPS. You need to have GPU passthrough, and even though you can make that work, it’s very risky (hardly a stable sane thing to build a business on), and you’re just running Windows again, but worse. We need GPUs in Windows already (primarily NVIDIA) just to keep the CAD from being too slow, and to keep our rendering options open.
Even if it worked brilliantly in a VM (which it doesn’t), why would I double my operating systems and run them simultaneously? That’s just begging for compatibility issues, frustration, and defeats the point of avoiding Windows entirely. Any benefits for avoiding Windows are almost completely negated.
I would consider Wine instead, or Proton. It may work really well with some software, but may have trouble with other software.
Besides the design stuff, the entire manufacturing industry is dependent on Microsoft. There are thousands -- probably hundreds of thousands -- of air-gapped NT4 machines in factories running very specific but unsupported for 20 years software, for example. All the big MES systems, test software, and various tooling to run factories are all designed for Windows only.
Some of that software, especially for controlling specific hardware, can even be DOS software.
The hardware can be reliable and expensive; software support, long unavailable.
- cortana
- ads… ADS… in the OS
- forced updates
- windows live accounts (or is it microsoft.com? wait, no, I think it’s office.com?)
- two system settings screens
- major new versions after “last version of Windows ever: 10”
If you've opted out of netplan, then you need to configure one of systemd-networkd or NetworkManager manually (on server, NetworkManager is only present if you've installed it).
I personally used to be opposed to netplan but I had to do some very esoteric network configuration which was super easy with netplan.
Unless it still insists on realizing all state or no state, I think I still prefer the things doing the work for/underneath Netplan
To your point, esoteric configurations. Netplan is all or nothing: done improperly, it can more easily break the whole house of cards.
It tries/applies everything... where the others allow more utility
I think it's intentional because they don't really want users changing stuff, especially the spyware parts.
Android is also truly horrible, with some settings (like privacy settings) redirecting you to a sluggish embedded remote web page.
I dread the time when they remove the old one. Small settings that I like to tinker with are hidden here and I doubt program managers will care about them at all.
Example: customizing the mouse theme. Seems frivolous, but without changing the text cursor, increasing the cursor size too much makes it very difficult to pinpoint text since the effect point is on the center of a big cursor rather than on a clearly defined edge.
I asked me one time about safari. Over the life of each computer.
When I was logging into my work the other day, using MS Teams it suddenly dawned on me that my younger self is very disappointed. There I was in the process of logging into work VPN, the teams app is actually scanning my face couple of times... and god knows what else.
Everyone could benefit from more grace. Him, myself, all of us.
We do all have faults. They aren't all the same, though. Measured responses are important.
I completely agree with RMS on a lot of things, how I interact with people (and his big area of contention) isn't one
Part of me wonders if all this advertisement and service hawking is related to a fear of massive market size reduction, overall.
The one thing Windows gets right IMO is binary backward compatibilty, in particular with games, but also with older apps still from the pre-subscription era (3D modelling, Adobe sw, ...). Unfortunately, x86 seems kindof going under. Haven't tested extensively, but I wouldn't be surprised if a regular (non-pro) iPad can run old DOS games on RetroArch/dosbox longer on a charge than any outdated x86 hardware can. Right now, MS also again attempts to bring Windows onto ARM after their former attempt failed miserably with no exclusive software available that people actually wanted to use (cf Dells new ARM-based XPS and others). Is there instruction-level emulation with JIT on Windows ARM for x86/64 like Apple's Rosetta/Rosetta2?
It's the same tactics with Windows: introduce shockingly bad new version, but continue support of old version (seems neutral because "I'm never upgrading"). Force new users to new version. Release new "good" version with all the compromises of previous version (seems positive).
I looked on Microsoft's site but all it says is to contact their sales team. Did you have luck with that process? Usually when a company says 'contact sales' that means it is very expensive.
You need to buy into Volume Licensing, which requires at least 4 licenses. You can't buy it directly from Microsoft, but there are resellers that will sell it to you ( https://appsource.microsoft.com/en-us/marketplace/partner-di... ). It works out to about $200.
Afterwards, you'll be able to buy an LTSC license. It's around $300 per device.
Open Source isn't challenge-free, but it's much closer to the chess experience that I seek than the poker experience of proprietary alternatives.
Not stashed away in some obscure, poker-style location.
It's been pretty good so far, and makes Win 11 seem like a usable desktop rather than the piece of shit that MS wants to inflict on people.
Linus Tech Tips reviewed it a while back, and gave it the thumbs up:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dc7CIkZcWYE
Bizarrely, the earliest versions of AtlasOS used to disable security updates. No idea what was going through their heads when they did that.
Thankfully that stupidity has passed (after lots of people complained), so (security) updates work as expected these days.
Win11 offline install and de-dork instructions is a must:
https://github.com/StellarSand/privacy-settings/blob/main/Pr...
Even then, one must assume win11 comes with a telemetry payload every second update.
Linux has its own share of issues, but is far easier to develop on (if you check the hardware support before purchase). The only parts of win11 that are any good was the FOSS they packaged in.
Strange times for sure, MS still chasing a set-top box market 30 years after it flopped =)
It’s one of many I was able to find!
My favourite version of windows was Windows 2000. It was a true get shit done and stay out of the way experience. I believe the enterprise server versions retained some of that appeal (might still).
Forcing ads into something is a sure fire way to get me to stop using a product.
"We're getting things ready", reboot, create a Microsoft account, 10 data sharing settings to turn off, "almost ready..."
Iirc, a MacBook is ready to use without any updates.
Pretty sure some vendors update phones in the store to avoid bothering the customer with it. Seems like a lot of effort to boot the full inventory's amount of phones every time there's a security patch only so people don't have to download a diff on first launch (edit: found it https://www.macrumors.com/2024/03/27/what-new-machine-to-upd...)
The Debian "app" gives me access to apt and anything that has an ARM build, which is nearly everything. Sometimes I write code on it, like a PoC to brute force a numeric parking lot voucher was the most recent instance, but most commonly I use qalc (best calculator ever, also use it on desktop) and sshd to remotely access photos/Screenshots. It used to be more featureful and you could run things like wavemon and aircrack, but selinux restrictions have made that a thing of the past. Surely it's possible to adjust, but I haven't invested the time in finding out how yet
The Macbook's setup is definitely a bit faster than Windows, but it's not way faster. I still had to turn off a lot of the things it suggests, and I still was prompted to update the OS. However, the Macbook was less pushy and I felt the features at least seemed to offer some user value.
You're immediately hit with apps you can't uninstall (Edge) too.
Fwiw, CS2 ran away smoother for me on Kubuntu than it does on Win11 (same hardware). I wasn't expecting that.
The only time it’s mandatory is if you are restoring from a back up or transferring from another computer with a newer operating system.
So if your old machine was on 10.20.1 but your new machine is 10.19.4 because that was the newest when it was put in box then you’ll have to update it first.
Do you want to give this app access to downloads? To desktop? To microphone? What about this app? Sign in to iCloud. Sign in again. Maybe this time? Nope, sign in to iCloud.
I’ve picked my poison, and it’s Apple, but it’s far from perfect.
They’re obnoxious. I’m getting more annoyed with MacOS too for that and other reasons mostly around services.
But you can start using it without OS updates.
Or Microsoft's?
Or Apple's?
Suggest reading up on the history of personal computing, and then ask yourself if this is how it was supposed to go. At this point, even Mac and Linux users are starting to feel the loving embrace of their OS vendors' paternalism.
> So it was necessary to destroy the product in order to save its users.
I fail to see how an updated OS is a destroyed product.
I don't think you want to go there, broheim. Wait'll you hear my opinion of how "safe" your computer is, and whether it should be allowed on a network.
I fail to see how an updated OS is a destroyed product.
A personal computer, along with its operating system, should do what its owner tells it to do.
That was kind of the original idea, anyway.
I don’t have a perfect solution, but I also don’t have billions in the bank and lots of employees tasked to the issue.
One popup with a list of apps and their permissions would at least be a one stop shop, but even that wouldn’t be great on a new machine setup as your apps aren’t all there yet.
But maybe it’s just an issue if you are using the App Store variants of those apps. I don’t have experience in that. I am using zero apps from the App Store.
Try searching for a file by name. Third-parties have had this figured out for years and yet Microsoft can’t deliver accurate or quick results.
Two different interfaces for settings since the failed Metro experiment. The jarring introduction of old NT menus where they haven’t updated a setting to the new UI.
I could go on, but the author has done a good job of cataloguing a broken product.
I don’t mind them trying. But don’t keep asking, or ask again on every update, or badge settings because I haven’t my added to my wallet, or keep telling me how much better a family plan is when I’m single. It’s not better, it’s a waste of money.
I can’t imagine switching off macOS/iOS. I don’t want Linux or Windows. But I’m getting less happy every year.
It's an insanely tiny very low power thing that was almost as cheap as I could get. I just needed a Windows PC around and it fit my needs. Totally fine for basic stuff.
But wow. I’ve seen articles about how it was getting worse, new things MS has done, pulled back on, and put in later.
I was used to all the stupid advertisement stickers that have been there forever. Bing desktop images I’ve seen before and is a nice default IMO.
But the big ads in the start menu? And the thing of the day on the search bar? Candy Crush and other crap? CONSTANT OneDrive and Office 365 nagging? Are you sure you didn’t mean Edge this time? Really?
I’d heard of it all but it’s so comically over the top in person. And takes a while to find out how to disable.
My last personal PC was XP Pro in the early 2000s. I’ve used a number of work PCs with newer versions but they were all locked down with group policy so none of that appeared.
Windows is a self parody at this point. I know it’s a very good OS technically. But wow they found out how to ruin it.
There were system settings for the start menu things and the search bar. All the preloaded crud like Candy Crush, which I got the impression was more of a placeholder(?), was removed easily enough through the add/remove software panel. There was a preference somewhere to get Edge to shut up too.
I think I might’ve had to Google something to find one setting. None of it was really too bad. It’s just a bunch of wasted time that I shouldn’t have had to deal with.
And it feels like the OneDrive pop-up comes back every once in a while after a system update. But that’s easily dismissed too.
Nothing came from my OEM, it was just a bog standard Windows install. All the junk comes with windows. As the user, none of this was for me.
I view some of the stuff Apple does as an attempt to help me by selling me something, though not all of it. I don’t want it to happen. It’s annoying. But it somehow feels more appropriate than what Windows does.
Preloading Candy Crush? I mean come on.
* Cortana. Nobody should have been forced to use a modern version of Clippy, but at the OS level, and one named after a video game (AI) character. It made the whole OS feel like a joke - to me, at least.
* Tricking/forcing people to sign in with Microsoft/Outlook credentials, so their Windows account would now be tied to MS online credentials.
* Tricking/forcing users to upgrade into Windows 10. This happened to countless people, including to someone in my family.
* Displaying literal ads in the Start Menu
It’s the ads for services or upgrades to service plans or new features of services that I don’t care about that I hate.
IAPs ruined the App Store, services are ruining the OSes.
I left the MS Windows ecosystem in around 2001, did not really use XP or 7. I was on various linux distros until 2015- and for my needs at the time they were great! I used mostly desktops (power management/sleep not a big issue) and did not have to interop with "regular" users using MS Office, etc. I did some development, and in this area Linux excelled. I also had time to tweak and twiddle until things worked well.
2015 - 2021 I was on Mac OS. It was an improvement over Linux in several ways- mobile HW was great, sleep no problem, and I could interoperate. MacOS is great in so many ways (and as mentioned Apple HW is generally top-notch), but not perfect. For example, they don't really want you running "unapproved" (unsigned) software, and I understand network is needed to check if the software is approved: https://appleinsider.com/inside/macos/tips/how-to-launch-any... . Together with the fact that I had very little HW control (can't upgrade or replace parts myself on Macbooks especially) and that Apple make their stuff software pretty "sticky" (hard to get your data out) I ended my run using MacOS as my primary computer.
So now I am on MS Windows again, like the old days. It has the issues indicated in the article for sure- but I do feel a little more control than MacOS, strangely. Its easy, it mostly works and gets out of the way, and I can still upgrade RAM etc (for now, anyway- ARM PCs might be more like current MacBooks and could change this). Dev is better than in the past, and interop is no problem. The main reason I am on Windows is backward comparability. As I have aged, I value being able to use old things- and on this MS Windows is unmatched in my experience. I will see how long I last before the next leap ;-)
Meanwhile, Linux may be far more open, but a lot of hardware might not work at 100% feature parity (e.g. various peripherals, especially anything bluetooth).
It's also true that the interop situation has gotten far better on Windows. WSL works very well. But I'd also say that all 3 main OSs have much better interop than in the past. For example, gaming on Linux is more than viable, thanks to Valve. Finally, The Browser has become an OS of its own. And Electron-based apps like VSCode, Discord, and many others, are multiplatform.
Personally, I find all the 3 of the main OSs to be very compelling and impressive. They each have their own set of pros and cons. For someone who just wants things to work, MacOS is a great choice - but one that feels quite limiting (but some people feel a sense of freedom in that, actually). Windows also works very well in that regard. It's just that for many, it feels like Microsoft is treating us Windows-folk as dumb cattle and that they are taking our loyalty for granted. Meanwhile, Linux.. is hard to define. It's a lot of things and it's a constantly moving target. For me, I have found Linux on the desktop to have the most pain points. Not ones that I cannot manage or work around, but ones I'd rather not have to deal with.
Within minutes of turning it on I get broken features, disjointed UIs, poor performance, outdated software, and exploitative functionality. Not just from third parties, who are a big problem, but Microsoft itself! They've had decades to address these issues but instead just chase marketable ideas. If they course corrected even a little every year they'd have something viable but it doesn't seem like that's part of their corporate culture.
But I guess I'm wrong because they're a multi-trillion dollar company and still dominate the PC market.
I think I might be able to completely get rid of Windows now.
Has this happened to anyone else? I've never experienced an official Windows update rendering a system unbootable. I've certainly broken Windows before, especially when messing with the MBR, dual booting, changing system files for customization etc., but never with a random Tuesday patch.
They're all basically maintenance free, nothing really breaks and they just chug along.
https://blogs.microsoft.com/eupolicy/2024/03/07/microsoft-dm...
Manjaro Cinnamon LTE: I know there’s some controversy with Manjaro, but it’s been working fine for me and it drastically increased my laptop’s battery life.
AtlasOS, a trimmed down version of Windows 11 for gaming: I know it’s a bit controversial as well, but I’ll never install or store anything sensitive in it. Only games.
If you treat Apple hardware like a subscription model where you make sure not to hang on to anything for too long (these engineering problems that happen after a couple years seems awfully convenient) then you get the arguably better OS / general computing experience without the risk of expensive hardware going wrong over time. And it's an expensive subscription model today, the days of a top spec Apple laptop for £1500 are gone, so a decent general computing experience is now at a premium.
Owning a MBP beyond a few years these days puts you in the ticking time bomb territory, at some point whether it's the soldered SSD endurance or an exploding SSD/T2 chip, it cannot be affordably repaired when it bricks.
In the meantime, hackintoshes have a little bit of life left, and Linux looks to me finally like its only another 5-10 years before the year of the desktop is here, and I say that positively having used it on and off for 25 years
Three days later the computer rebooted and had undone all my fixes and now search was back to using the web!
Definitely never felt like MY system. It feels like a creepy corporation changing my settings. Which is exactly what it does.
Another three days later, Recall was announced.
Three days later, I wiped Windows from all my computers.
All going well for me, I love Pop!_OS
I have not looked much at the OS-modding scene recently, but there used to be huge communities around deep customisation, and they produced "distros" of Windows with very different defaults and much of the annoyances removed, and popular useful thirdparty software installed. It's not 100% legal of course, and that "choice to have Microsoft butt out" is usually an absolute --- no updates at all except ones you manually install, some things might not work (possibly a feature for some), and you are truly on your own (with the community) with those mods.
And this, in a "paid" OS. One, on top of everything, where - other than money - you are paying with compute and ever increasing disk space for "updates" to cover the vendor's incompetence incorporating bug fixes on the fly ...
In no other area of human industry is this model tolerared: Would you buy a car only to gradually receive better (correct) tires aftermarket?)
Isn't that what Tesla did with "Full Self-Driving"? And people are buying Teslas like crazy
(Then again, Tesla's aim has been bringing the "software model" to manufacturing. Thinking like primarily a "technology" company ...)
My computer is how I interface with the critical functions of my life; family, friends, income, entertainment. That is important time to me.
If you put any friction in front of me accessing those things, you are getting the boot. Interruptive advertising? Popups and popovers? A forced login where none is necessary? Delete.
I don't give a baker's fuck how valuable you think your service is, you get about 5-10 seconds of my time before you're wasting it. This is why people want book summaries and reviews, why they scan headlines, why they'll install ad blockers.
I thought that some things like games would stop working, but instead I had to install absolutely no drivers, fix nothing, video playback on my laptop has gotten better (before I often switched to 720p on YouTube) and even high performance requirement games on my desktop just work thanks to proton. It’s actually the year of the linux desktop for me now.
It's especially bizzare that it's a 4 year old laptop with dying battery and Windows 10.
Was it a Window thing or a hardware manufacturer thing? Either way it was very strange
Microsoft and their operating systems are exactly the same. I started using MS operating systems with DOS 2.0. I was hooked. Every new version really was an upgrade. I couldn't wait for each new release because they were all amazing and truly 'upgrades'. I used their stuff because it was good, not because I had to. Slowly however things started to change. Each new 'upgrade' came with things that didn't help and didn't improve. One day I realized they were upgrades, just not upgrades targeted at me. My machine slowly but surely became less and less mine. Eventually I couldn't take it anymore and jumped on the Linux bandwagon. The last two machines I have purchased haven't even made it to the windows startup screen before I wiped them and, just like SF, you would have to pay me a lot of money to move back.
I hope SF and Microsoft learn a lesson from this: If you aren't raising the next generation because they love your product then you are creating a group of people that will leave as soon as they get the chance.
Been on macOS for nearly a decade now. Ironically it still has some things that are objectively worse. Looking at you, lack of alt tabbing.
Pressing alt tab tab should go back two windows of focus, and alt tab tab tab should be three, etc. It was the best feature and now I regularly lose vim windows and terminals because switching windows seems to ruin the tabbing order. It’s never history-based anymore.
I’ll try it out though.
Pop quiz: you click on a chrome window, then a terminal window A, then a different terminal window B. Does pressing alt-tab-tab take you back to the exact same chrome window?
The idea is that it’s a history-based list of active windows. So each time you press tab while holding alt, it goes one further into history. It’s immensely helpful for maintaining context when you’re switching between four different apps during a dev session.
But, I appreciate the recommendation. I’ll test drive it tomorrow.
I don't have my macOS device on hand right now, but I'm almost certain that the AltTab app replicates that behavior. Or, at the very least, it throws out the incredibly annoying obsession that macOS has on separating switching between applications and switching between windows of one application.
The absurdity being the creation of an enterprise environment to use enterprise tools to shape a personal computer into something that closely resembles an experience you used to get out of the box 15 years ago.
To build a castle so as not to be treated like livestock.
It does sound weird to be hoenst, as this has not been my experience at all. My Macs have never felt like my own, and the obtrusiveness has been of a different form.
But reading through, my experience with Win10/11 has been slightly different as well. I haven't come back the next morning to find it 'broken', so I do wonder if it's about use cases and regional settings too - after all, isn't there a reduced jank in the European zones?
For most of the usual things I do, I forget Apple the company exists and just use the computer as a neutral tool. Windows 10 and especially 11 on the other hand makes Microsoft's "presence" known at every turn, kind of like I'm working in a team composed of 70% Microsoft sales reps.
But the moment I want to exercise control over a Mac, like install some software, I hit the Apple "bouncer", telling me that I need to identify myself and do everything through them.
Destroyed that abomination with a nice debian install.
> At this point, I have lost count of the number of times that I've left my perfectly working Windows computer at the end of my work day, only to return to a completely broken computer that won't boot the next morning.
What? I have had this happen maybe three times in my 30 years of using Windows products (from automatic updates). Do people really forget what a pain it was to patch things from scratch in 98, Win2k, or Windows ME? (Probably before then as well, but I didn't have the Internet). I remember using CDs for service packs, specialized software to download updates that MS didn't serve anymore, so many things. When that process failed, it was a all night event for one system.
I do remember rampant malware on Windows (unless you kind of knew what you were doing) until about 2007 when windows defender actually started helping and you didn't need to nuke your computer with Malware Bytes or something every time you used a web browser.
This belly aching and nostalgia is everywhere on the web, and I really think there is a trend toward selecting only the good memories.
We get old. It gets harder to deal with change. IMO, drop the ego, and say what you really mean.
However, I agree with the privacy and advertising gripes.
Swinsian on Mac OS is pretty good when im using a Mac.
In the latter case, some (most?) countries require the use of open software and standards in government and various regulated environments unless there's a specific and documented reason why that's practically impossible. You may be able to tell your college they need to support open software rather than requiring everyone to buy proprietary licenses and get familiar with those specific products
(A bit off-topic, but I can recommend using a translator to turn what you've written in English back into a language you're familiar with, to check that it says what your intended. That way, you practice writing and can check the result for good communication also. I've been doing this for German and this is helping me practice in situations where I otherwise would use a translator from my languages into German because the translation's correctness matters.)
Thankfully Linux Desktop is now a completely viable thing for many many professions.
Put all that aside, satisfactory of Windows peeked at Windows 7. Never seriously used Windows 8. Windows 10 was trouble, but still much better than Windows 11. When Windows 10 started rolling out, I heard there was lots of issues, so I ignored the upgrade notice. Soon I noticed the fan on computer was running crazily in midnight, but when I checked in the day time, it looked alright. It went on for around half a year or so, I was woken up and was so annoyed decided to check what was happening. It was M$ trying to upgrade to Windows 10. Alright, let me upgrade then. The manual upgrade failed and the rollback also failed. Had to clean wipe and install Windows 10 to avoid such nonsense. Then I started to notice after almost every update, there would most likely something got fixed or broken randomly. Also the Active Hours setting just annoyed me, but still not quite enough to force me to go to Linux.
Windows 11 is even worse. Got a Surface pro for the kid, took a couple of hours to get it working. Then an upgrade broke the display driver. Uninstall of the offending patch failed, could not rollback neither. So first clean wipe for Windows 10. On my gaming PC, all my settings to disable those defender etc would be lost after an update, the UI is sometimes very lagging, don't want to touch it yet as too much effort required. Then I got a new PC with Ryzen 7840u and 64G RAM, after booting up, the CPU would constantly be around 20% for no obvious reason. Since I didn't really have anything installed, so I directly wiped it and installed Linux. It was so good. Video/Audio drivers installed correctly automatically. CPU usage when idle now drops to ~2%. The only thing I miss about is Visual Studio, but that's about it.
unpopular opinion - almost all annoyances are most affecting those who can then find a solution and apply it (provided they don't get a restricted account from work).
on the other hand, have to agree that when even those publishing such circumventions had enough, m$ got to tread a bit lightly.
Then you can't have those dependencies managed by a package manager, which means you'll constantly be compiling (and dealing with conflicts yourself). This is not a viable path forward as it seems to be presented here.
>You have so many ways to do this - same as you're doing on windows.
On Windows I copy a binary and run it w/o giving a crap about the OS updates. Vastly different workflows for it to be called "same".
You don't just copy the binary on windows. You copy the binary and its dependencies. Unless it's based on .Net-framework, then yeah, you still care about it being updated through windows.
> Then you can't have those dependencies managed by a package manager, which means you'll constantly be compiling (and dealing with conflicts yourself).
That's not right. You don't need to use dependencies from the system. If you're compiling yourself, you can either make them static, or use your custom location. In either case, there are no conflicts to deal with.
If you're using whole app packages, then you don't care about system deps at all. Flatpak apps ship their whole environment. AppImage apps do too, just without full isolation. (https://appimage.github.io/apps/ entries are all "download-and-run")
Sure, but I can install s/w built for Windows XP into Windows 11 and it will just run 20 years later w/o modification - And I can do this with a large amount of commercial software, so its not a special case example which you can demonstrate on any OS. Simply not possible on any other desktop OS. Even if you have the source (which you won't for commercial s/w), its not just a simple recompile after 20 years.
>You don't need to use dependencies from the system. If you're compiling yourself, you can either make them static, or use your custom location. In either case, there are no conflicts to deal with
Static linking glibc.. yeah. :)
>If you're using whole app packages, then you don't care about system deps at all. Flatpak apps ship their whole environment. AppImage apps do too, just without full isolation. (https://appimage.github.io/apps/ entries are all "download-and-run")
Yet another "standard" that ultimately will fracture the deployment of software. These are just buggy half-baked standards anyway. Vendor releases 32bit AppImage and goes out of business, it stops working on 64bit OS.
I don't think you guys really get the insane backwards compatibility effort that Microsoft does to help keep line of business applications running.
Windows 11 installs all sorts of stupid stuff and turns it on.
I feel like I only know how to use Windows 10 and 11 because I know about all the old dialogs from old versions.
I struggled today on a Windows 10 computer with Wi-Fi and ethernet to turn on/off Wi-Fi due to mixed meaning of tile highlight state. Maybe it's just me.
And when Windows 11 installs updates and says "You're almost there" I say, "no, you're almost there and why are you doing this now."
I'm optimistic that eventually leadership will change and this will be corrected. Edit: or somehow a new OS will be developed that's backwards compatible with Windows.
None of the fucking app store icons work?
Terminal, one of the better additions of 10, shows up in the start menu with the image preview app icon...
I have tried all the stupid solutions around the icon cache to no avail.
Otherwise, yeah, Windows nowadays, especially the Windows 11 feels like a cheap bazaar.
I thought of that recently, when I noticed that Github started displaying links promoting Copilot.
Both nixOS and Guix are different to 'regular' distros in the way that they are declarative: there is a file that describes the full OS: every user, every package, every system service, where the bootloader goes and so on. The main idea is that you can take that file, nuke your hard disk, reuse it and you'll have the same OS byte by byte. This concept of reproducibility is not only very comfortable, but has profound ramifications in security (you know no compiler or library has been tampered with malware) or science.
But it goes deeper: Since the OS is described by a single file you can roll back to a previous version if your file is hosted on git (both OS manage this transparently without the need of a VCS). Users can have their own 'local copy' of that file with their own programs, including their own libraries with different versions. You can have different files as 'profiles' (one for work, one for personal projects, one for gaming) you can activate at any time when you want to switch tasks, or you can try your friend configuration on a chroot or isolated environment on top of your own system.
The main difference between nixOS and Guix is that guix uses guile scheme as configuration language for that particular file. I have plenty of '(packages (if is-laptop acpi)...)' entry on my own files.
guix shell is just a way to create a temporary environment to try something quick without polluting my OS. For instance, if I want to do some hacking on python2 I would do 'guix shell python2' and it will open a shell for me with python2 without changing my python3 binary and python3 libraries on my main system.
BTW you don't even have to change your whole system, both nix and guix can be installed on top of 'regular' distros (google 'guix foreign distro', which is the way I manage my rasperry pis).
There is way more than all that, I definitely encourage everyone to give it a try, it's a mind bending new way to use a OS.
If you want to "profoundly" improve security, you verify the whole install against a cryptographic hash on every boot, and you refuse to boot if the verification fails, and you keep the hashes in tamper-proof hardware -- like Android and ChromeOS do, but no other Linux distro does except for a distro specialized for cloud servers called Bottlerocket that is poor in resources (e.g., attention from developers).
NixOS's security is pretty poor even compared to the low standard of popular Linux distros because although it does incorporate one very good idea (and it is not reproducibility -- its refraining from giving packages as much ambient authority most OSes give them), security is mostly about paying attention to dozens of boring details, which the NixOS project does not care about as much as for example Fedora does. E.g., here is the project not caring about supply chain integrity: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36268776.
Another example: if you install Google Chrome onto Fedora the standard way (namely, dnf install google-chrome-stable) it points your Fedora install to an RPM repo hosted by Google, so that from then on, even if everyone in charge of the Fedora servers lost their minds, your Fedora install would continue to keep your browser up-to-date in a very timely manner (because it has been configured to look directly to Google's servers for updates, and Google's Chrome team is well-paid and has a stellar reputation for security and in particular for timely delivery of security updates). In contrast, when I installed NixOS's Chrome package, it arranged things so that every time I updated my NixOS install (using nixos-rebuild IIRC) it would look to NixOS's servers, so the security of my browser (and the browser is the source of many, many security vulnerabilities) depends on a NixOS maintainer getting the update from Google, then providing it to me. But you see, the Fedora way of handling that package has a single point of failure (namely, Google) whereas the way NixOS chose has two points (namely, Google and a NixOS maintainer who is probably a volunteer and might quit or die at any time -- and the NixOS project has not system in place to respond to that event in a timely manner if my experience with the NixOS project is any indication).
NixOS's machinery for updating packages is very flexible, so I'm sure it would've been pretty easy to arrange for NixOS's Chrome package to work the way Fedora's does, but the relevant decision maker at NixOS simply didn't think of it. But security consists in large part in paying attention to details like that. ADDED. Actually, now that I think of it, the Chrome project's servers provide only RPMs and DEBs, so for NixOS's maintainer of the Chrome package to handle updates to Chrome the way Fedora does would require that the installation of the Chrome package causes (as part of dependency satisfaction) the installation of RPM or dpkg and maybe parts of dnf or apt (so that later on, the nixos-rebuild command can look for updates on Google's servers), so it is not as easy as I was envisioning when I wrote that "it would've been pretty easy". (Still, that is probably how I would do if I were the NixOS maintainer.)
(quick edit) Guix packages are basically .scm (scheme) files on git, so the fedora/nix example does not apply either. Every file can be opened and inspected, most of them are basically a git clone + checking a hash. You can decide to use substitutes (binaries) or no, and substitutes are usually similar byte by byte across systems. As an example, this is the guix config for installing CRIU: https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/guix.git/tree/gnu/packages...
Given said that, I am ready to spend some of my funemployment time installing and using nix as my daily driver for a few months, so I will have more info and first hand knowledge of all that.
https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gtk/-/issues/3787
At least with Windows you don’t have to gaslight yourself into thinking that blurry fonts are better. If you have a setup with multiple high-res monitors (or, God forbid, have to mess with scaling), it takes a lot of work to be happy with the looks and feel of a Linux desktop compared to what you get out of the box with Windows or a Mac.
In terms of modifiability and openness, open source anything is far superior to anything else - which is valuable for a community like this. But there's still plenty to do in terms of providing as seamless of an experience to some average Joe as what macOS/Windows does.
That said, most if not all the nonsense can easily be disabled or removed so I agree with your overall position.
https://www.androidauthority.com/xiaomi-ads-business-966584/
>This advertisement business is what allows Xiaomi to subsidize and offset the cost of the hardware and reach those astonishingly low price points.
So it wont be surprising if Microsoft says the same
You'll be very sorry in a very short time if you put up with ads in an OS you paid for, on hardware you paid for. You're letting Microsoft externalize some of the cost of advertising to you.
Pardon my French, but someone had to say it and you needed to hear it.