Their newest tablet already ships with Android and not windows (which uses Linux in all its GPL goodness.) I wouldn't be surprised if they just started shipping Android with some wine-like backwards compatibility environment. It sounds crappy but have you used Windows lately? You can tell that they know it's a dead end.
True, the only way I could see that happen is if they not only include a compatibility layer for the application side but also a way for the kernel to host old Windows driver binaries. No idea how easy, difficult or completely impossible that would be.
With Intel's acquisition of SiFive... for Windows to support RISC V they'd need to do that anyway. They did it for ARM64 (partially) and are struggling. They have to do bunch of stuff via emulation instead.
Windows on ARM wasn't really a success story. Don't know if I would be so enthusiastic about RISC V.
I would like it, we need more open hardware. But I have no illusion that vendors like Microsoft, Google or Apple will first try to find a way to lock their systems down.
Eh, not really. Windows NT has always been designed for multiple architectures. Well-written applications (and to some extent drivers) just need recompiling for the new architecture.
Changing to a completely different kernel would be something else.
Even if they moved to the Linux kernel, which I think is incredibly unlikely and undesirable, they would have to replace so much of the disparately developed (and quite garbage) Linux Desktop userspace that you couldn't call it Linux Desktop any more than you could say the same about Android.
> and force themselves to rewrite all the userland libraries?
They already did a lot of that for the Linux port of SQL Server, which as I understand it is basically the same program running with a bundled compatibility layer that's basically an official Microsoft equivalent of WINE.
All the stuff they have recently released as open-source speaks otherwise. The problem why they will most likely never be able to open-source Windows is rather that they bought a lot of third-party components for the system that they simply aren't allowed to open-source. They'd probably have to rebuild half of the system to be able to open-source it, and that's the unlikely part.
I'm pretty sure there's even pieces of the broader system that they don't have source to outright; pinball was an example, and that one piece of Office... equation editor? Anyways, right; even if they absolutely wanted to open source everything right now, they certainly don't have ownership of everything needed to do that, and while they probably have the actual code for most things it's not necessarily guaranteed.
Darwin is BSD-licensed (it's a FreeBSD derivative after all), that's a huge difference to the copyleft GPL license of the Linux kernel. See e.g. the VMware vs Linux story for the implications of that.
What is it in tech with this obsession with consolidation? Alternatives and competition is healthy and as much as I love Linux the NT kernel is a fantastic piece of engineering as well.
Force the bastards to open and include their drivers in the mainline kernel or perish as Microsoft bars them from supporting Windows. They would trip over themselves to do just that.
Only thing missing is for them to start signing system files with a short-lived certificate, to force people to run updates every couple weeks.
Yes, I'm still bitter about my Windows Insider experience. On the one hand, it's kind of my fault - I signed up for testing the beta release. On the other hand, holy shit. I dual-boot, and I didn't log into Windows for some ~3 months, during which my Insider build expired. After that, when I finally did try booting to Windows, I was greeted with a completely bricked, unrecoverable system: core DLLs had expired certificates, and _nothing_ would start, as code signing checks failed.
(This was a Windows 10 upgraded from Windows 8, and it was past the free upgrade period, so I ended up buying a new Windows 10 license. So in the end, they've managed to make money off me with this.)
Well, the first problem with the Start menu is there are two of them.
But for example, a user wants to look up or change something to do with the configuration. How do they go about choosing which of these to try on the right-click Start menu: System, Device Manager, Computer Management, Settings.
I'm weary of suggesting that to those I provide tech support for anymore.
For me, on my current PC, typing up to "Visu" leads to "Visual Studio 2019", but adding one more character to "Visua" leads to "Visual Studio Code", which is what I wanted in the first place most of the time. No clue what the heuristics here are, but it's not predictable to me.
More troubling: "Che" leads to Microsoft's "Check for Updates", which is pretty much what I always want, but "Chec" leads to Java's "Check for Updates", which I kinda never want.
I can no longer predict to someone I'm guiding over the phone what typing something into the start menu will do. Even for me, I'll be typing something, and finish off a few keystrokes by muscles memory before hitting enter only to have it decide I really meant something else before I notice. And I suspect whatever heuristic uses the misfire as further ammunition to get things even more wrong in the future.
I understand and have dealt with this myself. I have to type "phot" before "Adobe Photoshop 2021" even appears as an option. But if you don't know where to find Bluetooth settings, for example, typing "bluetooth" will get you there.
You can't have a folder structure like in Xp (and 7?). Or decide where stuff should be and in what order. Also MS push crappy game adds there as shortcuts which look like they are allready installed.
In the author's defense, when a new major release of Windows is announced, assuming that this time it might happen without yet another not asked for start menu reshuffle would be quite the dark horse bet.
That first line suggests it’s another layer of veneer over 25 years of turds. Gee the settings app looks nice but there’s still five different control panel implementations linked to it and some settings aren’t even available yet.
Microsoft: please just finish your shit before changing it again.
To be fair, some major changes are not directly user-visible. For example, Microsoft created a new programming language (called "P") to rewrite the USB stack in Windows 8 or 8.1 that allegedly made that part more secure/reliable.
EDIT: I suppose there is a certain pressure to mess with the UI, so non-technical people will "see" the difference. Some changes have been genuine improvements, IMHO, like AeroSnap or the search field in the start menu, others have been disastrous (cough Windows 8 cough).
That's one of the worst offender. It opens a separate windows instead of searching in the menu itself, and returns a lot of crap (including web queries, wtf) except what it supposed to do: searching in installed applications. That can be done, at the expense of an additional click. Very poor UX by mixing concerns that belongs to different applications (Explorer and the browser).
> P") to rewrite the USB stack in Windows 8 or 8.1 that allegedly made that part more secure/reliable.
I wonder if that's why even on a gaming desktop USBs default to "turn off power to preserve battery" which made my keyboard stutter, and I had to turn off this setting from Device Manager.
It'll probably just be "Windows" and will continue to be updated every 6 months like Windows 10 currently is. I think this was the intention with Windows 10 anyway, hence the "last version of Windows" stuff. I wonder if this next version of Windows is an attempt to throw off some of the bad rap Windows 10's gotten with the "forced updates", unpopular Start menu design, ads on the lock screen, bundled shitware games, etc.
I've especially not enjoyed Windows occasionally hijacking the post-login screen to try to convince me to enable Cortana or whatever. The most frustrating thing is the only options when presented with the window were "Continue" or "Remind in 3 Days", rather than "Fuck Off". This abuse of user agency & consent is disgusting and ubiquitous in big tech.
Video games are the only thing keeping me on windows, plus last time I tried to set up a dual-boot with Ubuntu I somehow trashed the boot process of both OSs.
I've heard good things about proton. I also have some games outside of steam on gog and epic, does it work with those too? How about streaming the games to an Nvidia shield on a nearby TV?
The only gog game I have is Factorio. IIRC Epic doesn't like their stuff running without what is essentially a rootkit, so that might not work so well.
You'll want to look up the specific games you care about. It's hit and miss. Some will work fine, some won't. E.g. with respect to Epic for example, Fortnite was reported working at some point, but stopped working due to their anti-cheating solution. No idea what the current state is.
I'm not talking about games published/developed by epic, I'm talking about games purchased on the epic games store. Looking online it seems you can run & download EGS games on wine, maybe.
I play lots of multiplayer games on Linux. Multiplayer is a crap excuse for requiring a rootkit and if I really needed that I would just put emunand on my switch and call it a day.
I feel your pain - it was extra annoying on a gaming HTPC that is configured to boot directly into Steam Big Picture mode. Since the only peripheral plugged into it was the gaming controller, I had to go look for a spare mouse and dig out the HTPC from under the TV just to dismiss that thing.
I really wish I could get the rotating nature image on the Lock Screen without the ads. I think Google hangouts used to do this and I really enjoyed that aspect. I think Google hangouts possibly linked to Google+ photos, but they were more tasteful about it.
I don’t even know what the Windows Lock Screen ads are for, but they feel in my face. Certain attempts to log in to Windows will also open Edge.
I occasionally open the ad/tip by mistake, because I wake the mouse and PC by clicking. I guess this is my mistake for "holding it the wrong way", but it's quite annoying nonetheless.
Look up dynamic theme on the windows store. It grabs the daily bing images and sets your lock screen image to them but since its set to a picture there aren't any ads.
I think just calling it "Windows" is a fail. Even OSes that are updated constantly still have release numbers (iOS, Android, MacOS.) It helps customers understand the milestones behind the OS development and assists with marketing.
> I wonder if this next version of Windows is an attempt to throw off some of the bad rap Windows 10's gotten with the "forced updates", unpopular Start menu design, ads on the lock screen, bundled shitware games, etc.
Maybe, but I bet it won't work for the simple reason that they'll do exactly those same things and add a few more equally stupid things too.
> I wonder if this next version of Windows is an attempt to throw off some of the bad rap Windows 10's gotten with the "forced updates", unpopular Start menu design, ads on the lock screen, bundled shitware games, etc.
Always, always, follow the money.
> "forced updates"
The Windows security model is fundamentally flawed in the internet age. You should not need to reboot to update important files (until recently Adobe Reader would require full OS restarts for some updates; the fact that this was even allowed by the OS was a flaw in itself). People hate forced reboots, so they would just delay them indefinitely. Unpatched systems would get hacked, Microsoft would be blamed for it, reputation loss, money lost.
> unpopular Start menu design
They tried to merge desktop and mobile OSes to save development money and to migrate desktop users to mobile, to make more money.
> ads on the lock screen
Money. I assume, lots of it.
> bundled shitware games
Money. Again, probably lots of money.
TL;DR: These things will become worse and worse, not better.
I'd pay good money for a 1:1 Windows 2000 Pro, where the ONLY thing they've done is update whatever it is that needs updating to also run the new programs.
If they remastered Windows XP, I'd dig it. Some of my favorite old tech memories were finding bootleg versions of XP with the shitty MIDI key gen and installing it with an all black theme and windows update removed. lol
Microsoft really needs to consider building a completely new OS that doesn’t have the legacy issues that plague Windows 10. It feels like the paint cracks off as you root around each generation of interface.
By all means keep a LTS version of Windows, but draw a line.
I understand what you mean but one of the powers of Microsoft is, in fact, their extreme backwards compatibility and it would be very damaging if they chose to throw that out of the window.
They could do what Apple did and provide a Windows compatibility layer which gets progressively more buried as old software gets replaced until it's just kept around for the weird stuff that never gets properly updated because it's maintained by a rotating set of undergrads.
They tried that with the App Store stuff. That was supposed to be the new world. But it wasn’t compelling, the store sucked and still does today and it was and still is like wading in excrement working on that side of things.
That’s why I qualified with a comment on an LTS version of Windows.
Keep something around for the next decade (or two) that keeps old hardware running. Allow virtualisation for everyone else.
It does seem that Apple’s approach of aggressively throwing out support for features while designing their own silicon with none of the legacy support that Intel keep around for x86 has paid off. Rosetta 2 ‘just works’.
For enterprise, some version of Windows will probably always be needed. WSL has shown that MS can respond to the developer community and shows that they can do it well. For home users and gamers a fast and lean OS will help shift hardware. The former who will be tempted by Macs and the latter who don’t want bloat will want as little OS overhead as possible.
They could build a completely new OS and keep the compatibility with a compatibility layer like Wine.
Somehow I doubt the New Microsoft will do it right though. They don't strike me as the kind of people who give a shit about compatibility and user experience the way Old Microsoft did.
Do you think the kernel needs to be re-written from scratch? Yeah, the current one has issues, but that seems like an unnecessarily large undertaking, and one that is also not likely to produce bug-free code. I'd have thought some kind of testing/fuzzing/formal analysis would be a better approach.
Do you think the Win32/WPF/whatever APIs need to be thrown out and some other way of interacting with the core OS services be put in place (e.g. porting the GTKx.y/Glib API?) with some kind of shim for backwards-compatibility?
I mean start from scratch as much as possible and rethink how a computer is used by most people.
By all means keep Windows around for enterprise but build a new OS that is forward looking and eschews backwards compatibility when virtualisation can be used instead.
Aggressively simplify the OS. Make it consistent with a UX that keeps the OS out of the users way. Contain software from vomiting itself across your system. Make things discoverable and consistent, don’t impose restrictions such as locking open files.
I’m coming from this as a user not an OS developer. I use a mix of MacOS, Linux and Windows from day to day. Windows is often a dinosaur and constantly gets in the way. Each new version of Windows is another layer of paint over an existing peeling layer. Certainly Windows can be performant and it would be foolish to throw it all out.
I understand a lot of this is hot air, and your question is asking about specifics. I’m coming from this based on my observations on how students and elderly relatives use their computers.
I’ve moved my parents to iPads. They’re simple and they can do whatever they want to get done. They can browse the web, watch video, FaceTime and see photos of their grandkids etc. At the worst I have to run an OS update for them. They always forget the passwords but TouchID takes care of that.
Meanwhile my father in law has his ongoing war on technology with lists of passwords, frequent manual backups, and lists of things that need to be fixed whenever we visit. The computer is a ticking time bomb to be feared.
My students frequently have no idea what a file system is. Files are scattered everywhere on disk and the cloud. They have no idea what a USB drive does and some think simply just plugging one in magically copies the relevant files somewhere.
Usually by the time I’ve finished with them they’re writing code or running WSL or playing with a raspberry pi or whatever.
So we have this gap. There is the older generation where computers are scary and they’re happy with simplified but robust devices. There is the younger generation where most of them live on their phone and have no clue how computers actually work. When they end up in a job they’ll plod along with excel and whatever enterprise software they need. It really doesn’t matter what version of Windows or Office.
In the middle there are some people (of all ages) who actually have some degree of knowledge.
My solution is to make the desktop OS easier to use while still providing the complexity that is required as one gains experience. Right now Windows is intimidating and outdated.
And what about drivers? It isn't like Apple where there are a handful of supported devices from the last three years the new OS would need to support. Drivers would either be buggy through whatever compatibility mode they create, or they'll drop support for a lot of hardware.
I think they did that twice and both were complete flops. The first one, I think, was the Windows RT. RT had none of the cruft, but many people complained that you couldn't install random windows apps and it just couldn't take off. I think Windows 10 S might be the other but my memory is failing me.
So I'm a musician, I use a lot of pro-audio hardware and it's a miracle that some gear requiring 15 year old drivers are still willing to run on W10. I'd like to keep it that way if possible.
Now I understand the idea behind technical debt, however backward compatibility is one of Window's biggest strength, so if a new OS has to be designed, it should be considered carefully.
Obviously open source drivers when needed or strict class compliance should be what manufacturers strive for today.
>> Windows 10 was released in July 2015 and dubbed "Windows as a service"
Can we please have 7 back, with its complete lack of built in ads, dark patterns ramming the Microsoft browser down your throat, telemetry everywhere (the calculator, really?), changes for the sake of showing that some manager did something rather than functionality (Rename this PC -> Rename this PC (Advanced))? Windows 10 still regularly shows clients as offline even though their internet connection is functioning normally, has trouble putting my laptop to sleep when I shut the lid (with ALL programs closed), and the recent 21H1 update caused a number of blue screens across our fleet.
Just fix your damn mess before you "hail a new era in personal computing", Micosoft.
You know, I wouldn't even mind about telemetry in the calculator if that would have told them that I activate Programmer Mode a whole lot through the Alt+3 shortcut, and that my muscle memory of 20 years was completely ruined by them moving the Programmer Mode to Alt+4 for GUI consistency (after they added a new Graphing Mode that they wanted to stick right next to the Scientific Mode).
(Microsoft PowerToys for XP had a graphing calculator but it doesn't support inequalities.)
I coincidentally had to fire up Sheepshaver recently so I've got it on hand. I put that inequality in the MacOS 8 Graphing Calculator and it gave me a nice looking checkerboard. Except I had to write it as "sin(x)sin(y)<0" or else it would think I meant "sin(xsin(y))<0", which is pretty itself.
If they had used that telemetry to realise that maybe just maybe people tended to use the same mode and it might be an idea to store it and reapply it on launch then I could see a point to the telemetry. But they aren't even using it to solve the problems their users have, it is just data collection for collections sake if the applications aren't improving!
Side note about the Alt-1/2/3/4 shortcuts in calculator - does anyone else find that they only work sporadically? I just tried it a bunch of times now and got maybe 50-60% success rate on it actually triggering the mode switch.
Good god, I never knew about the date calculator option. To add years, months or days to a date there are three drop downs with the values 1 to 999, why on earth is it done this way?
Pass. Windows 10 is just so much better than 7. I still don’t get why people don’t move on. I’m happier having window 10 which has never crashed on me vs 7 which did it weekly.
OS stability is not the thing that people are concerned about when criticising Windows 10. What has made me turn away from windows is the complete lack of trust I have that the OS will respect my privacy.
I switched from 7 to 10 when it was offered. I stayed with 10 for about one year, and I liked it thanks to all the fixes and improvements and despite the occasional quirk.
But after one year, I realized my computer didn't feel like it was mine anymore. I jumped to linux and never went back.
The difference between invasive and non-invasive telemetry is choice. If you give me the choice to turn it off, there's some sense of mutual trust: you trust me to leave it enabled if I have no reason not to and I trust you not to abuse the information collected. When there is no choice, as with Windows 10, I have to wonder why. What are you collecting that you won't allow me to turn it off at my discretion? What are you doing with that information that earning my trust is not an option?
I like reading these kinds of comments, but then I snap back to reality. It's easier to make Windows 10 behave than make Linux actually work properly beyond a browser and an editor.
How so? Not to start the old windows vs linux flamewar but if something in Windows doesn't work the way you want it you don't have many options. In Linux you can change absolutely everything... and people have been making it "actually work properly" for decades. This feels like just your personal experience about how some Linux distro didn't work out of the box the way you wanted.
Yeah it's a useless debate. If you're lucky to only need software that runs on Linux and you use desktop hardware, it likely works well. It certainly works great in a VM, unlike Windows.
Not really. It's just too complicated of a "debate" (it's actually a non-debate) or discussion to dive into the differentiating factors that will assume different priorities for different people. Tradeoffs are everywhere and in everything and so is nuance.
Personally, I am growing tired of chasing Windows releases every few years so I will re-prioritize almost entirely around Linux's strengths.
For example, I have a 3700x / 5700XT computer. Windows 10 runs flawlessly without issues. Ubuntu, or any flavour of Ubuntu, runs like garbage. I have to fix screen tearing, slow boot, sleeping. Then from a clean install, open up firefox, and it crashes multiple times per day. It's not even close to stable.
Yet I run any flavour of Ubuntu on my Intel laptop and it's flawless.
Setup Manjaro on this same desktop, and it works flawlessly, yet on the same laptop if I use Wayland, it's completely broken.
Yet all the same hardware, never had an issue with Windows.
So my point is: Everyones experience is different. For some people they can set it up and fix it to be flawless, others just want to set it up and use it, not fiddle around.
I guess that's the business norm. It's not really that Windows 7 is better than Windows 10, but that traditional business practices - of buying tools and using them and a respect for users - was better than modern business practices - of data and limited services and a confidence that the plan is always right. Everything has changed to foster that distrust, even completely non-computer services like journalism, taxis and food delivery.
If Microsoft would go back to pick up development from Windows 7, or Windows 3.11 for Workgroups, it would still be about abusing their customers.
We more or less know what they collect. Trust MS more than facebook, Google, Twitter, tiktok. I mean your privacy is probably violated more just browsing the net, even with all your ad blockers and tracking disabled, than using Windows for any daily task.
I only use Windows for gaming these days but privacy is hardly an issue in Windows compared to anything else.
seems like whataboutism to me. It's OK for your operating system to leak information about me because the web already leaks information about me? Here's a novel idea: how about I get tracked by neither?
This is like the reverse of eye-for-an-eye: pardon for a pardon makes the whole world innocent.
Interesting. Maybe GP comment knows something I don't, but from your article, this seems like much ado about nothing. From your article and the linked follow-up:
The issue:
"[Apple's] policy [is]: “You can also disable location-based system services by tapping on System Services and turning off each location-based system service.” But apparently there are some system services on this model...which request location data and cannot be disabled by users without completely turning off location services."
Apple's response:
“We do not see any actual security implications,” an Apple engineer wrote in a response to KrebsOnSecurity. “It is expected behavior that the Location Services icon appears in the status bar when Location Services is enabled. The icon appears for system services that do not have a switch in Settings”
"...“Ultra Wideband technology is an industry standard technology and is subject to international regulatory requirements that require it to be turned off in certain locations,” the statement continues. “iOS uses Location Services to help determine if iPhone is in these prohibited locations in order to disable Ultra Wideband and comply with regulations. The management of Ultrawide Band compliance and its use of location data is done entirely on the device and Apple is not collecting user location data.”"
Nobody's excusing them in this thread. But for me, Windows 8 was actually the last straw. I hate this "all your data are belong to us" mentality, and that absolutely includes smartphones, tablets, and internet "things" [edit: as well as PCs].
When a company, that has been playing a dirty game for decades making a monopoly of their software while collecting billions++ in licenses, people tend to expect some standards; and rightfully so.
No, I don't want your ads. No, I don't want your nagging. I want you to shut up and leave me alone. You're a tool that I bought, not my mother. I don't need you to nag me or give me advice.
Related gripe: When it wants you to do something, it offers you two options, "Yes" and "Ask me later". Conspicuously missing: "No, and never ask me again". It won't let me say no, just later. Grr.
The only thing that was outright good about 10 were the improvements in how the taskbar and window management works. Port that to 7 and call it a day, I say.
That might be true for you but as a developer that uses it daily there have been hundreds if not thousands of improvements to 10 that I would not want to give up.
Such as what, exactly? Most languages are platform agnostic: Java, .NET, Python, Ruby, JS, TypeScript. Windows offers nothing to developers of these languages that Unixes haven't been offering already for decades.
As a developer, I'd be happier than anything if my work just let me have a bare-metal Linux machine to do my work on.
I wasn't comparing it to Unix. I was just responding to the parent that Windows 10 had many improvements over 7 and I would not want to go back?
I also enjoy Windows as a development platform quite a bit. It has made me a LOT of money in the last two decades so I can't complain. I like Linux a lot too, no need to only like one or the other.
As much as I dislike Windows in general, the NT based Windows systems have been very stable for a very long time. I once saw a server running NT 4.0 with 6 years uptime.
I don't know about Vista, but in my experience both XP and 7 have been very stable as long the hardware was reliable and no messy device drivers were in use (which includes AV software).
That being said, Windows 10 did a few things I liked, too.
Vista was a good OS. It’s just when it came out there was a huge lack of drivers. So everyone got upset. When 7 came out with less DRM, all the drivers were available at this point. And vista was solid.
I remember reading that before SP1, performance was very unpredictable; I read one review where it performed okay on a mediocre machine but was abysmally slow on a high end machine.
SP1, allegedly, fixed a lot of those problems, but by that time Vista's reputation was beyond repair.
The driver situation might have been made worse by the transition to 64-bit. I remember a friend of mine tried XP 64bit back in the day, and the system crashed constantly because some driver had been written with the assumption that a long is exactly 32 bits wide or something like that.
As far as Windows goes, I really liked 7. The UI was reasonably pretty and useful, performance was not too bad, compared to earlier versions, security was much better (or so I'm told, not being an expert).
Right? The only time someone has weekly crashes is bad drivers or bad hardware. I had multiple-months uptime on my Win7 machines and it only wasn't longer because I would reboot for whatever non-essential reason.
I'm using Win 10 LTSC, and that is clearly better than 7, even if I have to work really hard to disable a ton of stupid crap, as well as a lot of telemetry.
I think it says a lot about Microsoft that they constantly move around the 'search with Bing from the start menu' setting, and make it harder to find every time. They know we turn it off, and they don't want us to.
In addition to that, even with the setting disabled, I STILL see "web searches" when I search from the start menu. Not every time though, which makes it more frustrating.
Windows 10 has lost me weekends' worth of experiment data multiple times thanks to its insistence on installing updates on a whim. Windows 7 has never done that. I would call Windows 7 more stable.
Neither Win7 nor Win10 crashes on me, but the whole "user experience" has been such an inconsistent mess after Win7, even though Win10 tried to undo the worst UX sins of Win8 it's still a far ways off from Win7.
It's as if the Windows team is trying to throw random shit to the wall to see what sticks instead of trying to do slow and steady improvements.
Apparently Win10 has some serious improvements over Win7 under the hood, but those technological improvements don't count much if the user facing parts are quickly deteriorating.
Win 7 doesn't handle high dpi properly, doesn't have secure boot, storage pools, usb 3 (IIRC), DX12, face unlock, etc. There is quite a lot of UX stuff that has changed since 7.
I do understand where you're coming from, but I guess I see it differently - For e.g. High DPI directly impacts UX for me as I can run older applications at 150% without squinting at the tiny icons. Security is part of UX for me, etc.
2011 Windows 7 desktop install still running daily at home with no signs of slowing down. Runs everything I need, even games. Never gave me a single issue even after frankenstining with added NVMe and newer GPU.
Two year old Win 10 work PC install committed suicide after updating few months back. Blue screen on boot. Spent more time "troubleshooting" that issue than reinstalling win 10 after giving up.
Well, those are 2 different PCs, so it's hard to compare them. Anyway I'm sure we all can come up with opposite stories as well, so to continue with anecdotes: unlike back in the days, blue screens (well, the ones I encounter, like 1 a year across 50+ machines of all ages) now are most often caused by actual harware failures the OS (be it Winows or linux) cannot cope with. Pre Windows-7 every stupid driver manufacturer would cause it instead. At least that has been fixed now.
I've had great success with Vista too. The point is Windows 10 is no where near as stable as you have no control over the update process which may nuke your install. It's a step backwards and offers no technological advantages.
Yep, keep underlying invisible improvements of 10 like the kernel but ditch the whole UI and revert it back to Windows 7. It was peak Windows design (second is Windows Classic UI) and change for sake of change totally ruined it.
Agreed. Whoever is working on the kernel and PowerShell at MS can stay, everyone working on Windows UX is fired. Preferably out of a cannon and into the sun.
> everyone working on Windows UX is fired. Preferably out of a cannon and into the sun.
I was on the Windows accessibility team, which was under the shell org. Not everything that we did in Windows 10 was bad. The Narrator screen reader built into Windows 7 sucked (my former colleagues and managers agreed); we made that much better in Windows 10. I wouldn't want to go back to Windows being the only platform where the only good screen readers were the third-party ones, and those products had to use ugly hacks to make Windows accessible.
At least until Microsoft wraps-up the Open Business licensing program you can still acquire LTSC thru that program. You'll have to work with a reseller. It's a bit of a pain, but it's not too bad. I've used Dell and CDW in the past.
The minimum volume license buy is 5 licenses. Any good reseller will sell you 1 copy of LTSC and 4 of the cheapest SKU in the catalog (usually $5-10 / ea) to get your volume license contract started. After that you used to be able to purchase piecemeal for 2 years before you need to fulfill the minimum purchase again. The licenses themselves are perpetual. With the program being killed I'd treat it as a one-time purchase and assume you have no further rights after October (I think) of this year.
I don't like it, but it's not too hard to do either. The trick is finding a reseller who will leave you alone after the purchase (no sales calls, etc).
LTSC isn't intended for day-to-day PC users. MSFT would happily sell you licensed for 500 seats. I have had Customers with >500 seat Open License contracts. (It's all pretty meaningless now since the program is effectively dead anyway...)
I'm glad I'm allowed to run LTSC. I've never seen a desktop OS that stable. I run it for months without reboots with a heavy usage and I never got any problems with it since I started using it in 2015.
No, that's as expected! LTSC still gets updated, but only for security issues—they will never change anything else.
That means the updates are smaller and less frequent, and rarely break anything. Personally, this is exactly what I want.
There are registry keys which will fully turn off automatic updates, if you want. I use these in Virtual Machines, since I don't boot those frequently and they're supposed to be disposable. I'm pretty sure they also work in Enterprise and Pro, btw.
For what it's worth one of LTSC updates dropped the display frame rate to 5 fps until the machine was rebooted and another spawned a temporary process that started eating 80% of CPU. Both happened in a span of just several months.
It's absurd how much better LTSC is than publicly available versions of Win 10. If you have enterprise licensing or MSDN subscriptions or Partner connections, the only reason not to run it is if you really, really need WSL. Even then, I think you can get it enabled if you really need to.
> the only reason not to run it is if you really, really need WSL. Even then, I think you can get it enabled if you really need to.
Indeed you can; I don't recall any difference between LTSC and non-LTSC when it comes to enabling WSL (though I haven't tried since WSL 2 came around, so maybe things changed).
Yep, sibling is correct. I'd used LTSC for all my gaming until MSFS came out, then I had to switch to Windows 10. Looking forward to the next LTSC version so I can switch back, hope it has WSL2.
FWIW, Enterprise is the same, but with more updates... which sadly install at whatever time W10 wants with no regard for active hours (not sure what's up with that).
The updates are one of the things I like about LTSC though. It gets security updates only, so the behavior of the system never changes out from under me, and the updates download and install very quickly!
I find Win10 Enterprise to be almost as good, with some group policies set (like "Turn off Microsoft consumer experiences" and "Restrict Internet communication," among others) it is quite stable and unobtrusive.
Windows 10 LTS is all fun and games until you've got a samsung laptop, where the only supported way to load all the drivers is through their app on the Windows store, which does not work/isnt installed on LTS.
Honestly though, not having my hardware volume keys work is a small price to pay for not having the regular windows 10 garbage.
There's got to be other ways to get the drivers, usually the hardware is generic enough if you pull the PCI ids you can get them from Windows update or manufacturers' websites, right?
The correct way to handle something like this would be DSC, at least the way you can actually set Local Policy correctly instead of just modifying the registry.
And OS settings scattered around multiple places (control panel vs settings), forced rebooting every 10min, resetting your default apps regularly, trying to prevent me from creating a local account, and for most of the life of windows 10 a broken start menu (locking for a long time, inconsistent search results), cortana.
I am personally convinced that the windows developers all use macs and are not bothered by these glaring, in your face quality issues.
I think this was somewhat hyperbolic, it's not that frequent, but it's still beyond ridiculous.
I run VMs on vmware workstation. Every 2 or 3 days I come in to find the system rebooted during the night. I've tried every knob possible to turn it off to no avail. Updates regularly reset all the power settings so it suspends after 30 minutes.
The lack of control over the machine's basic functioning makes it barely fit for purpose.
yup - this one kills me too. I'll have multiple VMs/docker images up and running all week and discover my dev machine sitting there with a fresh login prompt. A hard, not scheduled by me, reboot is absolutely unacceptable.
microsoft has watched people in the past NEVER update their operating system for whatever reason. too much of a pain, "no need", can't deal with the outage caused by a reboot, whatever.
microsoft has also been blamed quite voraciously for "insecure" operating systems allowing worms to spread, when patched systems don't even get infected.
so, because MS is damned if they do, and damned if they don't, Microsoft has chosen to "do" and keep people patched up.
oh the horror.
the culture of blaming Microsoft for things that you or your installed applications do is the cause for this attitude Microsoft has about users not knowing what's good for themselves. THEY DON'T KNOW WHATS BEST; Not when it comes to security. We as users have demonstrated this over and over again.
So MS err on the side of caution, and essentially force updates.
and, yes, Microsoft change things, for reason(s) that you are not aware of, because either a new feature requires a change in a supporting subsystem, or because they believe they've discovered a better way to do something, or through extensive user testing they have discovered a better UI paradigm. or maybe just because they want to.
look, things are NEVER going to remain the same from year to year. your "the good old days" were someone else's "this new stuff sucks so much, why did they change it, it was fine" and that will be true so long as humans use things others create.
sometimes the decisions Microsoft makes are good. sometimes they are bad. yes, the correct decision FOR YOU is crystal clear FOR YOU, but guess what? other people exist, and what's best for them is something else.
so the majority get better representation. positively and negatively. I hate many decisions Microsoft has made, and I recognize that there is no way to please everyone. It is amazing to me how many people do not understand this.
(in this entire comment, I am using the royal "you" and I am not talking about any specific individual.)
Maybe they should make an OS that doesn't get pwned if you connect it to the internet when it's two weeks behind on updates. Linux and BSD machines manage it. Remote 0-days don't come by that often.
> Maybe they should make an OS that doesn't get pwned if you connect it to the internet when it's two weeks behind on updates.
do you really believe that they AREN'T working on this? of course they are. the field of software development is extraordinarily young. we still don't know how to do things very well, and we're still discovering new ways to know we aren't doing things well.
> Linux and BSD machines manage it.
it's a matter of target value, and the number of people who would be inconvenienced enough to pay a random to unlock their files on Linux is FAR smaller than for Windows. So attackers go where the money is. Governments overwhelmingly use Windows as a desktop OS as well. Attackers go where the secrets are. etc.
And when you count remote exploits capable of remote code execution, last I read there had been slightly more of those on Linux than Windows. don't quote me on that until I find a source.
> Remote 0-days don't come by that often.
yes they do. not all of them get media attention, though. the most recent monthly patch from MS for Windows 10 included fixes for six of them. All were actively being exploited. SIX.
If we're talking target value, I rather think that servers are higher value than people's desktops - they have lots more juicy info, and richer owners.
I think there is mismatch in publicly here. When private consumer's computers gets hijacked, those kind of stories can show up in normal non-technical newspapers, as a warning or a horror story for other consumers.
But does hijacking of servers create that kind of publicity? Sometimes companies have to admit that they have been hacked because of data leak. But do they publicly admit for every breach? Is it in private companies interest to go public with that kind of information? And if they do, does it reach non-technical newspapers?
There was a good thread about Linux kernel security today, a slideshow and video. TLDR; many unsafe practices because of C, bad project management to track bugs, triage bugs, correctly applying patches, correctly map patches with CVEs
So this comes up every time Windows comes up. I have a "Pro" version, went into Group Policy Editor and changed updates to require user action. This setting is supported by Microsoft and persists through updates. It only updates if I tell it to update.
Is that too hard to discover? Do you use a Home edition? (Obviously if you use any unsupported registry hacks it can revert to default behaviour any time...)
I have already tried this and all of the other recommendations out there including Shutup10 (on Win 10 Pro). It's quite possible it was working and got reset on an update, lots of things seem to get reset.
But whatever the actual case, it's not at all obvious what triggers the reboots or why. It doesn't even have the courtesy to ask. It just does it and loses all my current work and VM states. The deliberate removal of direct user control is absolutely nuts. I didn't buy my computer with its primary purpose being applying Windows updates and rebooting. It's there for me to use for doing work, and it's failing at that by placing Microsoft's whims above my needs.
Every 2-3 days? Microsoft doesn't even publish patches that require reboots that often.
NEVER has a Microsoft patch ever reset my power settings to re-enable standby after X minutes. I have dozens of machines that I use between home and work. never once has that happened.
Every major update e.g. 29H2 has reset the power settings the past couple of years. Patches don't do this, but the major updates do seem to reset a whole swath of basic settings and it's bloody infuriating.
No major release has ever done this to me. I have a desktop PC which I first installed Windows 10 on in 2015, and where I initially turned off the stupid "standby after 20 minutes of inactivity" setting, whatever it's called, and not once have I ever need to repeat that action. On that computer or any other.
> Updates regularly reset all the power settings so it suspends after 30 minutes.
Until recently, I was having major issues with every update resetting network and sharing settings, which essentially caused shared folders to become invisible to other computers on the network. It was a real pain and I'm glad they seem to have fixed whatever was causing it.
> Updates regularly reset all the power settings so it suspends after 30 minutes.
I have also hit this behavior and it is shocking - I gave a relative a laptop that should get 7 hours of battery life, but she was getting maybe 2 (and the laptop would get boiling hot) because the power mode defaulted to "performance". I fixed it for her when I visited but it reset itself after I left - a condition it remained in until the computer died from chronic overheating. It's scandalous.
This is my biggest pain points of windows 10. Why is it OK for windows to change my default image viewer everyday, with the some obscure message "there is a problem with your image viewer, we changed it to preinstalled image viewer from Windows"? Why? My image viewer is running perfectly OK, it has never crashed. I don't understand it at all.
it's because your preferred image viewer isn't doing what it's supposed to do, and windows is correctly doing what it can to make sure you're using an image viewer that works.
Your image viewer is editing registry keys to set itself as the file extension handler instead of using the correct way - the correct way is to register itself as a new handler so Windows prompts the user whether to change to the new program or not. Trying to make the change by editing registry keys is a pattern used by shady devs to hijack file extensions without user consent, and as s user defence Windows rejects the change and resets the file handlers to default.
By far, the most effective tactic I've found for controlling those update-triggered reboots is quite simple:
Set your wifi as metered.
That's it. It'll tell you about updates, but not auto-download them, until like 6 months or something have passed. It'll even actually fail to download them sometimes, even when you click the download button... but un-metering easily fixes that.
For Pro SKUs on up, group policy isn't exactly obvious but it is more effective. You can disable automatic downloading or installation of updates, and you can disable forced rebooting. You can also disable Cortana, most telemetry, and some other things. I've yet to see it messed with by an upgrade and it applies no matter what network you connect to.
I think you can disable Cortana (and many other annoyances) by just disabling the service. But yeah, group policy is generally more capable and fine grained.
And yeah, Cortana was one of the first things I killed off after getting a windows machine again, though I don't remember for sure how. It's so bad.
You can but one of the grievances with what Microsoft is doing with Windows is the tendency to reverse some of those electives after you install an update. I haven't seen this happen with GP, probably because MS isn't in the habit of duping their corporate customers (yet?).
N.B. same guy, different account because passwords are hard.
Another thing, you used to be able to easily a) create a local account, b) create a domain account, c) create a default profile that new accounts used.
The new and improved setup gave us a crap start menu (apps vs programs etc), all sorts of crap defaults that no one would ever want, endless advertising disguised as "helpful" prompts. Did you know internet explorer is 10x faster than chrome? Did you know IE has been replaced by edge which is even faster than IE was? etc
I recently discovered, while helping a family member, that to unlock Windows from S mode you now need a Microsoft account. This is really crazy: I need a stupid Microsoft account to use my PC.
Without mentioning that the only way to create a local user is to setup windows without connecting it to the internet.
And without mentioning the amount of nagging, ads and spam that Windows users have to withstand. Like, the other day Edge reappeared on my taskbar by itself and reset itself as the default browser. And how many times do I need to confirm that yes, I am not crazy, I want to use another browser?
It’s a pity, because under the crust of shit, there’s a good OS with wonderful software compatibility that spans over decades and that is, overall, quite stable. Too bad it is constantly trying to bother its users.
Month ago I installed Windows 10 and created a local account while connected to the internet, if I remember correctly it was hidden by 2 or 3 steps. Professional version.
You have to pick "Work network" or some such thing, meaning you intend to join it to a domain, in order to have the option to create a local account if you've already hooked it to network. This also means it has to be Pro version, Home doesn't have this option.
Windows S mode is a tightly locked down mode that only allows Microsoft Store Apps to be used and only allows Microsoft Edge for a browser. It's basically making your computer like a Windows 10 edition of a Chromebook.
------
I'm all for "you shouldn't need a Microsoft account to use your computer", but if you want to you use the locked down mode that is specifically FOR tight integration with MS's services and limiting you from everything else....needing a Microsoft account seems to make sense.
Why are you using S mode if that's not what you want?
I'm fully aware of what S mode is.
A family member bought a 600€ laptop from Dell that came with Windows S. To unlock it and allow said family member to install software that is not on the Microsoft Store (which is to say, any software, really), we had to setup a Microsoft account, as otherwise it was impossible to unlock it.
And by the way, I doubt it's anyone's choice to use S mode. It certainly wouldn't be mine.
> we had to setup a Microsoft account, as otherwise it was impossible to unlock it.
Why not boot from a Windows 10 ISO and install Windows Home from there? As an added bonus, it would be a lot cleaner without all of the Dell junkware as well.
It probably wouldn't be anyone's choice, but on the other hand, it's probably many people's non-choice, i.e. people who don't care about or know which OS they use
This, so much. I don't want a Microsoft account, at all, ever. So I entered a bogus email address. Now (almost) every time I log in, it tells me there's a problem with my account that I need to fix...
Free clue for Microsoft: I know you keep wanting to "leverage" your base of Windows installs into more income in other areas. But when you use leverage, your users feel forced. And we don't like it. Stop it. You're pissing off your customers.
Or like the man said, "You can't win, Gates. The more you tighten your grip, the more computer systems slip through your fingers."
(Yes, I'm calling out Gates. It started under him, decades ago.)
I ran into Windows S when setting up a laptop for my mother. I was hot and pissed that they force you to handover an account/data to use your system. It's clear that the Windows world is out of ideas, and is now looking to move into datamining to maintain revenues. Revenues none of which will be spent on making sure Patch Tuesday doesn't brick and BSOD people's machines.
This new era in personal computing is "you are the product, not the customer." This always sucks but it's absolutely unforgivable in an OS that you actually pay for. If Windows were free maybe it'd be a compromise some people would make.
The old era of personal computing was actual personal computing. If you want that MacOS is the closest commercial OS, or use Linux or BSD if you have more tinkering tolerance.
You should look into an alternative then. Linux is quite beginner friendly these days and with Wine you can emulate pretty much any Windows application if that's what's holding you back from switching. If not then MacOS is the way to go. If you really want to go "back" then you should have a look at ReactOS which is a sort of an open-source Windows clone.
I can't comment on recent Windows-related event as XP was the last version of Windows that I used and even back then I wasn't happy about all the "spyware" that came with it. I can only imagine it's gotten worse since then.
I said "pretty much any" not "every" since we're talking about regular usage of a computer. OP didn't mention anything in particular so I suggested three alternatives. Before you start calling people out you should first define what "complex" is.
PowerPoint 2016 is listed as “garbage” in winehq, and that’s the latest version listed.
Recent Photoshop is either silver or garbage depending on the version. Premiere is listed as garbage for all versions.
Newest iTunes is bronze.
I’m not even trying to find bad examples. I’m just poking around in their public db for popular software that doesn’t exist in Linux. I’ve run into this every time I try to use wine for real — it’s never worked well. It’s also a really hard problem! You basically need to re-write Windows and all of it’s related components, which one of the worlds biggest companies has spent decades on and however many billions of dollars. But it’s not like “pretty much any” windows software will run well. It’s quite selective outside of games.
Linux was quite beginner friendly twenty plus years ago, IME. Remember Mandrake Linux? Then you had Ubuntu ten years ago! It's had enough time. The one thing that used to repeatedly make me chuckle was the "This will be the year of the Linux desktop" stories, which seemed to appear almost yearly! :)
One can complain about Windows, but at the end of the day I have way more issues with desktop Linux (which I use principally.)
I find myself in an awkward situation where I don't like any of the three major desktop operating systems for different reasons. It's more a matter of picking the one that's less bad. Currently for me that's Linux for work, Windows for games, and Mac for a laptop.
I need a new laptop next year. I'll probably go for a Windows laptop where I can dual boot Linux.
I've been using Linux on-and-off since the fall of 1993 and I've learned that the best way to use Linux is to pick the most popular distribution and then do as little customization as possible. You still will probably have to wipe and reinstall from scratch every five years, but that's not a Linux-only problem.
That's also been my strategy. I use Ubuntu and I don't mess with the configuration.
Printers, scanners, nvidia graphics cards, dual monitors have all been a huge source of issues for me.
Then a lot of stuff is just glitchy and fixing it is a pain. For some reason QT from apt was completely messed up for me, so I had to compile and install it myself, which was non trivial.
My non-customization strategy extends to basically not connecting printers and scanners, not using anything other than basic video modes, and I've never even tried multi-monitor setups.
Not sure why someone decided to downvote my comment, as it's a completely valid suggestion made in good faith and not some kind of nag or offtopic.
The BSD OSes are often overlooked as a desktop platform despite being very easy to run and configure. They have excellent built-in documentation that the rest of the community could take inspiration from. They are a complete OS built and maintained together, rather than a distribution of disparate software from various sources bundled around a kernel. Even this reason alone is enough to make them very cohesive, and easy to understand. Their default installations are minimal (perhaps even to a fault in some users' eyes) allowing you to be clearly aware of the software that gets installed. Managing and configuring services is, IMO, far easier than on Linux (depending on distribution).
I understand that it's not for everyone, but I thought it's worth mentioning in case you hadn't looked at this family of OSes before, since I think they offer a huge amount of what Linux offers, but in a more cohesively-structured and simplified way. I'm definitely gradually becoming more invested myself (though still testing the waters hehe).
Definitely worth looking at BSDs. For servers they are a no-brainer (as is illumos) but GhostBSD is also quite nice desktop ready edition of FreeBSD with GUI installer and all. Been trialing it at $work for general desktop use instead of linux and it seems to run pretty good on quite new hardware as well.
Yeah until an update to the graphics driver, followed by a reboot, takes you to a black screen and nothing happens. So you use another computer to look online and there are five different solutions for five slightly different versions of different linux distributions, but none of them are the version you have and none of them work for your version.
This all happened six months ago, which is the most recent attempt at using the "now user-friendly version" of linux that stretches back 20 years.
I've been using various Linux and BSD flavours as my main desktop OS and also at work for over 15 years now and never had any major issue such as the one you describe. So now what are we going to do? How do we decide who is right and who is wrong? I don't understand these types of comments, if an alternative doesn't work for you then you keep using what you were in the first place. There's no problem here. What exactly are you suggesting, that you experienced a problem so it won't work for anyone else?
The original poster is correct. For some configurations Linux is a complete shit show of pain. And it is not stable over time. I had a nicely working T495 which is apparently officially supported by Ubuntu. Worked wonderfully for ages. Then about 3 months ago a kernel update broke it. It works for about ten minutes then the GPU driver craps itself.
My experience was the same until I started to use off-the-shelf or simply “consumer top” hardware, then it changed. It all shines and then you get a recent laptop or a mobo that aren’t a sped up version of IBM PC/AT or 8259. I also managed a small park of BSD and Linux boxes at work for a while.
What exactly are you suggesting, that you experienced a problem so it won't work for anyone else?
People can give it a try, but shouldn’t expect that it’s all okay once it shows a wallpaper. Committing to something like OS requires a prior knowledge of operational risks. I think this.
Do you carefully curate your hardware? Only purchase from a very limited selection and don't use advanced hardware features (biometric authentication, for example)?
Those are loaded questions, I'm quite sure I know the answers (yes and yes).
It's on an older thinkpad. I can't remember the model. When linux blew up and I tried three different variants of linux and they all had different, annoying, time-consuming issues after about a week of use, I threw it in a drawer and got the ad blocker on my router working (which was the main thing I was trying to use linux for on my home network).
The point of this kind of post is a counter-voice to the "Hey guys! Linux is desktop-ready now and so much better!" That might be true for some people. It hasn't been true for me every time I've tried out Linux, and I've been giving various flavors a shot since RedHat 2. And trying to find help or documentation for troubleshooting problems in Linux can be an absolute nightmare because of the million flavors and versions of linux and the chains of dependency for all of the different installations. If one person gets lazy (or is on vacation or dies) and doesn't update one specific part of a dependency chain, everything falls apart and good luck finding someone who is having the same problem who documented it in a way that google can bring you to.
I'm happy Linux "just works" for you, but that hasn't been my experience.
Nvidia graphics driver perhaps? Linux with proprietary drivers tends to suck (and Nvidia has been especially unfriendly to FOSS drivers). Intel and AMD support open GPU drivers, which tend to be be better. This might be why you're hearing about experiences that don't match yours.
Also, people can have legitimately different priorities. Some folks might want freedom from vendors badly enough to buy inferior but supported hardware, and/or get their hands dirty dealing with problems. At least there's a choice.
On NixOS, you just reboot to the previous version thanks to immutability.
Linux GPU stuff is rough, but the above really helped. + Nix has a declarative way to configure the driver so other people did the hard part for me anyways.
Nix allows fearless Linux hacking (and thus, gaining of expertise.)
Personally I'd rather deal with a few bugs than deal with a hostile operating system which is determined to surveil me and curtail my freedom of choice using dark patterns and uncontrollable settings.
Not only that - Linux as a standard Debian or Ubuntu system did also become astonishingly beginner-friendly for people who do not like to tinker with computers, and just use them to read mail, edit documents, and browse the web. It's literally setting up once, send them the laptop, it works for five years or more, without any servicing.
Even if Windows 10 has problems with scattered settings, old style programs vs new style apps, default apps and start menu annoyances, Linux Desktop annoyances are on a completely different level.
The huge Gnome 3 schism, that lead to many different Gnome forks. And consequently GTK is more of a Gnome 3 toolkit rather than a universal toolkit, which will affect non-gnome GTK apps.
And if you manage to pick a desktop, hopefully by avoiding Gnome 3 because it constantly changes workflow and uses buggy JavaScript plugins, you realize that you will probably have Gnome 3 installed anyway because apps or the distro having dependencies to Gnome, if you don’t want to settle for old forks of those apps with less features.
And if you didn’t pick Gnome (or KDE) it is a good idea to install a compositor if you don’t like software rendered desktop like the good old Windows 9x days.
Be sure to turn the compositor off if you plan to play any games, especially if you thinking about playing on Wine. Or accept to always play in full screen. This will of course annoy you every time you need to look up something online.
If your game doesn’t run well, just add this unknown PPA that will installs nightly compiled graphics libraries (who wouldn’t?).
And if your computer freezes mid game, sorry you didn’t change the virtual memory size before because it is a fixed size. Tough luck.
And then of course the entire X vs Wayland situation.
> And if you didn’t pick Gnome (or KDE) it is a good idea to install a compositor if you don’t like software rendered desktop like the good old Windows 9x days.
So I haven't gone out of the way to install a compositor (are you talking a wayland compositor, or the older Compiz type stuff)?
But I have 2x1440p and 1x1080p and I've not noticed any perf issues, which I assume is what you're highlighting as the downside?
And I use all three major desktop OSes daily, so it's not that there's some blazing fast responsiveness to be had on Windows or OS X I'm unaware of.
> If your game doesn’t run well, just add this unknown PPA that will installs nightly compiled graphics libraries (who wouldn’t?).
This feels like five years out of date. Just pick a compatibility tool dropdown in Steam for most people. Lutris if you want something open source.
> And if your computer freezes mid game, sorry you didn’t change the virtual memory size before because it is a fixed size. Tough luck.
I haven't had a swap partition in years, and not once has it lead to a game crash.
Older compositor like compiz and compton. I have only used Wayland with Gnome 3. Without compositor I experienced screen tearing. Less popular desktop environments and window managers usually only support X.
My subjective feeling is that the snappiness is better in Windows than Linux and MacOS. I think that the pure desktop experience (moving & resizing windows, graphics, font rendering, login/logout, shortcuts, etc) is still unbeatable on Windows. What has gone downhill for Windows is the changes due to mobile & tablet adaptions and the cloud integration (Microsoft account vs local account etc).
I needed to install more up to date graphic libraries thru a PPA to avoid artifacts and weird rendering for a Steam installed game (Crusader Kings 3). Lutris is great, but to my understanding you need to manually install dxvk to get the best performance (someone can correct me on that (and Wine 6 broke a lot of things)). Also make sure you are running the correct gfx kernel module or otherwise hack your grub file.
Yes, you can disable swap entirely and hope it doesn't affect stability. By default Ubuntu creates a 2GB swap file, but if you are on a 16GB machine (not an unusual setup for a desktop computer) that can fill up pretty quickly and Linux will go into a swapping frenzy. You can't even ssh into the machine, just hard reboot or hope it recovers this hour.
When this happens the first time, it is not obvious that it is the swap file that is at blame for what happened. I'm not sure if it even exist a GUI for chaining the swap file size in Gnome (Disks app maybe?). But if you manage to change the swap file size, you have to decide, can I turn it off and hope nothing breaks or should increase it to match whatever RAM or more. It is weird that a desktop operating system ships with a feature that doesn't work.
>And consequently GTK is more of a Gnome 3 toolkit rather than a universal toolkit, which will affect non-gnome GTK apps.
This is not really true, and has not affected anything that I've seen. Basically every GTK desktop (including GNOME) has another separate widget library on top of GTK, to include its own widgets specific to that desktop. Also GTK3 is currently release frozen and will not be adding any more features, GTK4 is the current version.
>hopefully by avoiding Gnome 3 because it constantly changes workflow and uses buggy JavaScript plugins,
I haven't seen any desktop system that doesn't change workflow over time, or doesn't have some bugs in the plugins. That's a sad fact of life when you have hundreds of plugins made by various people, with varying quality. FYI KDE is also using javascript as a plugin language for the desktop, and for a number of other QML things, so it makes no sense to single out GNOME for use of javascript: https://develop.kde.org/docs/plasma/scripting/
>And then of course the entire X vs Wayland situation.
The situation with compositing should improve over time with Wayland, the idea there is to not ever turn off compositing (though the Wayland implementations are still optimizing this for the various edge cases).
This is the tip of the iceberg when it comes to their hostility towards other
projects using VTE as a library. GTK and most of the GNOME project are much of
the same. Avoid them and don't make the mistake of thinking their libraries are
meant for others to use.
JavaScript can definitely work as scripting language for a desktop environment, but it doesn't work for Gnome in the current state.
Personally I prefer building GUIs in a scripting language
like JavaScript over a compiled language like C and C++
and
I think for Gnome and other desktops that uses this
technique, it is in the right direction
But the negatives in short are poor documentation, memory leaks, you end up only using the approved plugins (if you don't like to restart your desktop more than once a day) which of course negates the whole idea of a plugin system.
It's a bit odd to read this sentence. GTK2 got its last minor release over 10 years ago, and was EOLed 6 months ago. It's a dead project. GTK3 is also feature frozen as of 6 months ago, and will not see any features brought back from GTK2. If you want to get some of these issues fixed, it would be best to start submitting patches to GTK4, or trying to find other solutions that will work there. Or, you could try to revive some of that GTK2 code yourself, although I wouldn't recommend it -- a lot of that code is very obsolete.
>Horrible GTK3 / GNOME UI design is leaking into Ubuntu Mate applications in 20.04
This is a design decision made independently by the MATE developers to update their app to a different design, no? I don't see what GNOME has to do with this. Regardless of your feelings on it, at least one person seems to have thought it was the right decision.
>And then you have the terminal Termite
I remember this issue from last time it was discussed, I think the Termite maintainer overreacted as a result of a very normal technical disagreement. I don't really witness them rejecting patches any more than any other project. I also disagreed with that developer's decision to fork on a technical level, I thought that was unnecessary and could have been avoided.
>But the negatives in short are poor documentation, memory leaks, you end up only using the approved plugins (if you don't like to restart your desktop more than once a day) which of course negates the whole idea of a plugin system.
Some people are actually working on the docs, please contribute if you are able: https://gjs.guide/
There have been issues with memory leaks in the past, but those are bugs that can pop up with any garbage collected language. I'm not sure what you'd expect them to do, besides do the normal thing, and fix the individual bugs whenever possible.
I hate that I always have to say this, but there is no alternative to only using approved plugins, on any plugin system. I don't know what you mean it negates it. In Javascript the crashes and hangs are usually from unhandled exceptions and infinite loops -- This is even worse with a C or C++ plugin system, because those are memory unsafe and can cause bad segfaults. If the javascript is causing segfaults then that's probably a bug that should be reported.
For those who are not aware of its existence, there are some projects, that try to keep up with a "debloater", meaning they maintain a script, to remove as much of that crap as possible.
First thing I do on a new windows computer:
You missed Windows 2000! I actually really liked it. Since it wasn't as consumer focused, there were occasional issues with GPUs/games, but for the most part it was really solid.
I don’t play games on my Windows machine. I support hundreds of people who will never use Linux because it would cost too much time and money to switch.
There was never any real reason to ever "upgrade" beyond Windows 7, except that MS stopped supporting it. It still works fine. I know numerous people who still run it as their daily driver, including playing all the latest games (there are very very few that actually _require_ Windows 10).
I also have to question whether these UX changes provide any benefit to users at all. They strike me as nothing but a cost to users in terms of familiarity and discoverability. Unless the new UI changes are somehow objectively better in any of those regards, it's a net negative change. I know some people will say, for example, "you can change the task bar back to where it was". However, apparently less than 5% of users ever change default settings, according to an unfortunately-anecdotal article[0], so a change like this presumably decides how ~95% of people will use the OS.
I can't wait to explain to my 83 yr old uncle (who doesn't understand the difference between a website and an application on the computer) why everything just randomly moved over and looks way different, after he has spent years just getting familiar with basic usage of the computer to begin with.
Monkey’s Paw: Here you go! It is now called Windows 365, loses all legacy support and can only be leased on a monthly plan! The upside is that you don’t have to bother with all those pesky driver updates!
Is there RemoteApp ability in any of the linux RDP clients?
If so, there's the option of running Windows in a VM on your Linux machine, and having seamless Windows apps on your Linux desktop.
It's a bit like what MS are going to offer with their WSL, but in reverse. I've never tried it, but it might work, and give people the best of both worlds.
WSL is not really virtualised, it's a linux kernel translation layer for linux userland (which is why it's not actually letting you use linux at all, it's allowing you to run GNU and some linux programs). What I mean is the reverse, running win programs on Linux without virtualisation, like WINE, but official win libs.
Imagine MS porting the _official_ windows libs to linux and FOSSing them so we don't have to play WINE roulette and get some official compatibility. It's not inconceivable, MS already realises their future is in SaaS, not desktop OS, this is an opportunity for them to finally throw in the towel and focus on their future.
... but it's probably not gona happen, they can easily keep eating the cost of windows and keep it as leverage just in-case, user experience be damned.
"Run Windows apps such as Microsoft Office/Adobe in Linux (Ubuntu/Fedora) and GNOME/KDE as if they were a part of the native OS, including Nautilus integration."
Calling ME a successor to 98 isn't quite fair either, considering the amount of NT that was shoehorned into ME's code base. It really was an amalgamation of both code bases.
There was some networking shit, a few utilities and shell enhancements, what else? I don’t think much of NT was shoehorned into Me, correct me if you think otherwise.
Windows architecture is a mess, I wish more software companies would support Linux as cross platform compatibility gets easier each day but that doesn’t seem to be case.
Unfortunately it is really hard for game development companies to develop on Linux as most of the software used by artists require Windows to function. Hopefully one day my company will be able ditch Windows completely but it might take another decade.
Seriously. I think it is just momentum that keeps people in a parasitic relationship with Adobe. Print isn't that relevant today and even that is no issue for alternatives. I just use both in a non-professional manner, but they are extremely dependable tools. I use them on Apple devices too. They even run perfectly on an M1 with an emulation layer. Really good performance. Next notebook is probably a Linux device again, but designers and artists have a lot of choice today.
The problem is not the software the artists use. I'm sure that Google designers use Mac too even though Google is a Linux shop. The problem is the extremely tiny market that Linux users represent. Plus issues with drivers, binary compatibility between releases, etc.
I can't take anyone seriously who says "Windows architecture is a mess" in the same breath as they promote Linux Desktop, an architecture with no consistent userspace by design.
Linux on desktop sucks because no one is maintaining it. Yes there are freelancers and volunteers but they can take it only this far.
Linux works on the servers because lots of companies don't wanna be locked into MS offerings and pay for building all their ecosystem around Linux by their business profit.
Such business doesn't exist for desktop Linux and that's the only way to make it happen. It's also a tough job. See Android whose development has been paid for over the years still gets forked and fragmented due to the fact that apparently Linux doesn't maintain a consistent HAL (perhaps so they can refactor easily idk).
So this Linux desktop dream just won't come true when there's no stable business paying for the development.
To be fair, Linux distros change even faster than that, but it's pretty annoying that neither of them can make a single version that lasts more than a decade. I don't want to keep upgrading software my whole life, as if I need a new hammer every few years because nails keep "innovating"
I'm staying away from Windows as much as I can. The Windows 10 home edition is so bloated with nonsense applications (of which some can't be removed directly). Also, it is odd that there are still some icons and popups that have this old Vista (and sometimes even 98) style. So incredibly messy. The entire thing feels like an American commercial during the super bowl. Bleh.
I truly believe that my hardware running a Linux OS gets to live a longer, healthier and happier life than if it was running a Windows OS.
A family member had a slow windows install. I checked the system utilization, suspecting paging. Guess what: 3/4 GB of the laptop were used by windows, leaving 1GB for all other applications. Apparently, deprecation via automatic updates is in, and it comes with candy crush.
4 GB, especially if you don't have an SSD, isn't really enough for Windows 10.
> I installed Ubuntu
I did this once and regretted it. Except for OS itself, nothing quite worked reliably, and you're basically the only person who can help them if it has problems.
The problem is low-end laptops ship with Windows barely working, then Windows inevitably bloats itself and more-or-less bricks the device.
I agree that many won’t like Linux due to it being different, but it’s at least functional in this case. The web browser feels the same, at least, which is enough for casual users.
They probably just stopped using those devices, use their smartphone for everything, and just don't complain to you anymore because you're the weird condescending techie.
It's an interesting experiment to ask the average Microsoft Windows user to identify - let's say 5 things - in their current workflows, that they couldn't do in Microsoft Windows XP (or 7, etc - pick the subject's age-appropriate release).
Similarly for versions of Microsoft Office products.
At the risk of sounding churlish, the last three can be done on earlier versions of Microsoft Windows, for varying degrees of downloading 'sketchy tools'.
Notepad.exe upgrade occurred last year I think? But one feels like Microsoft could have done that at any time in the past 3 decades. I suspect anyone who was hurt by this was likely to long since shifted to Notepad++.
Virtual Desktops are indeed a compelling feature, which I've relied on with KDE since last century -- though I still haven't tried them on a Windows box.
Hyper-V -- I've used this a few times on Windows 10, though I believe it's not available on the most common version of the OS, right? I'm using Pro and Education versions - which do have the feature.
Luckily I said compared to Windows XP, because Hyper-V's been available since Windows 8 / Server 2008.
My guess is that most users of Windows won't even know what items 2-4 even mean much less find them a boon to their every day workflows. They're nice but they don't seem like the sort of things that couldn't just be added to XP/7.
It's more interesting to do the same thing with MacOS X vs Windows because Windows has unfortunately been held back because an overly vocal minority is against progress.
MacOS is still the most advanced desktop environment for computing but I'm no longer convinced it will even be an option 10 years from now so I just want Microsoft to focus on replicating the best parts and throwing out the Windows cruft.
Saying this as someone who returned to Windows after a 10+ year hiatus because I needed powerful GPUs for my work.
It's interesting that the responses you got were all dev related improvements (better line endings, WSL, hyper-v etc.) but I thought I'd try to take a stab at this from a non-power user's perspective:
- Better bluetooth integration (N/A in XP? Unreliable in Win7?)
- Snipping tool (Don't remember if in XP, definitely part of win7)
- Improved automatic driver detection (Drivers were pretty rough in XP, okay in win7 but still needed manufacturer installs for many things)
- Built in camera app? (Voice recorder was always there for audio testing)
- Built in free mail app (outlook always cost money)
- Better out-of-the box browser (windows edge vs. IE)
- Free, good quality firewall (windows defender, came later in Win7 as an update not in XP)
I found it to actually be a difficult exercise which either says something about my memory of the old OS's or it reveals a distinct lack of dramatic changes.
@Everyone 'Windows 10 LTSB' is the secret good user-focused version of Windows 10.
It doesnt come with any shit on it (windows store, metro, xboxlive, cortana etc etc.) MS have also promised It will not receive any updates that change its functionality but will receive security updates, for 10 years. You can only get it if u buy in bulk tho. Or, u can just get it from tpb.. Considering MS are intentionally not selling by far the most user-respecting version of their OS to regular folks, it behooves us to pirate it.
Honestly, HN may want to just consider banning any site that runs this news article from being posted on HN, because this claim is basically proof they did not do even cursory research before posting.
So, it's basically just the default commitment Microsoft makes for new Windows versions, according to their Lifecycle Policy. It doesn't reflect the Windows-as-a-Service model at all, so is almost certainly not relevant to their actual plans.
The newer understanding is that Microsoft will release a new feature update every 6 months, and support each of them for 18 months. Almost certainly, this big refresh being announced soon will continue that model: All Windows 10 PCs will be eligible, support for existing releases will be for 18 months from their release, etc.
I mean, this is an example of where their technology reporting isn't even close to adequate. They're reporting an 11 year old fact as "news", that doesn't actually reflect the reality of today.
For a technology-focused community, BBC reporting on technology isn't adequate. And a bunch of blogspam articles have "covered" this "news" as well. I think it's a sign of bad journalism.
I agree with your point for the HN crowd reading it but it's not intended to be read by us soley. Yes, there have been some real shockers, I'll grant you that but I have read some decent scientific and some IT articles that do generally capture the specifics and ELI5. I think there's been a shift in the quality of the output, for sure, especitally around politics there too (although that's an entirely different story).
Tangentially, I used to work at the beeb a few years back, in a technical department (non journalistic). There's some fantastic people there that are extremely talented and do try to uphold Reithian principles, it's just unfortunately spoilt by others with different motives.
You're still operating under the notion that the BBC is Real Journalism, a grand institution that can be trusted as a source of well-researched, professionally vetted information. This hasn't been true for a long time, and this article is only a mild example of why. Most mainstream news sources have rotted away to being glorified tabloids at this point, and while the BBC may have rotted less, it's still in poor shape.
Sadly this is true. The BBC is staffed with some truly incredible talent and some of the output is world class - however, the news sub-desks are more or less a few freelancers copy/pasting from Reuters/syndicated news at this point, and articles are certainly not thoroughly vetted.
Sheer inertia and brand cachet are carrying the BBC.
I'm not sure which outlet is entirely trustworthy in the UK currently.
Slanting is moderately ambiguous, what do you mean? Obviously national news orgs are centric to their country where their readership is.
The bbc is hardly a Nationalistic or propaganda or even aligned with the government
There has been no change in their product lifecycle documentation. A bunch of dumb bloggers are reposting each other after one guy found the page, decided it meant Windows 11 was imminent, and posted it.
Indeed, but that support information was set back in 2015. (You won't find a Wayback going that far, but only because docs.microsoft.com is a newer website.)
Furthermore, it's just the default commitment Microsoft makes to businesses when they release new software. The statement isn't really taking into account the reality of the Windows-as-a-Service approach Microsoft takes now.
For instance, Windows 10's original build, 1507, you can see, ended support back in 2017, only about two years into the lifecycle.
The next version of Windows, whatever they call it, releasing this fall, will carry the same 18-24 month support cycle, have new feature releases released every 6-12 months, and "Windows 10" will seamlessly upgrade into it.
Apart from LTSB/LTSC releases, which have their own retirement dates (Windows 10 2019 LTSC is supported until 2029, for example), basically everyone will be off of "Windows 10" as it's currently called long before 2025, but your PC licensed for Windows 10 will still be updated and supported on the newer OS.
I don't see anything inaccurate in the story. It seems to reach all the most reasonable conclusions give the current EOL date for windows 10 and the event in less than 2 weeks that will announce the ”biggest change to windows in a decade”.
> Honestly, HN may want to just consider banning any site that runs this news article from being posted on HN, because this claim is basically proof they did not do even cursory research before posting.
You have made a strong claim of incompetence here and I would like to see you present some equally strong proof.
Note that the BBC article states:
> Mr Nadella and chief product officer Panos Panay will launch the new OS at a virtual event on 24 June, with Microsoft now facing stiff competition not just from Apple but also from Google
... which implies they have direct information about the launch of the new version.
Why would the BBC fabricate this information about the upcoming event? If you have evidence that this statement is incorrect, I encourage you to present it.
People talking about dark patterns here - but the dark patterns to persuade you that you need a microsoft account to install Win10 is awful! And to add salt to the wound, the way microsoft accounts are managed on Win10 especially with MS Teams is a total mess.
I often wonder if this is why it has never felt great for the actual users. That it is too compromised by the need to satisfy enterprise clients and home users.
Apple is pretty good at ignoring enterprise demands and I think it shows in their products.
Funny story. Most recent Windows10 update broke Fusion360's ability to do some things. In my case (and that of my customer) it crashed every time we went to export the CAM processor for the PCB export in the electronics section.
Happened after Saturday's big update too.
But if I use Win7 it exports just fine...even though there is big flags everywhere saying don't use Win7 with Fusion.
The only reason I don't go to linux entirely is software like Fusion360 which are windows/mac primarily. Kicad is already better than Eagle for electronics design (especially 5.99) and I have some hope that Freecad will do some updates which will make it a serious competitor in the CAD field.
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[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 306 ms ] threadI would like it, we need more open hardware. But I have no illusion that vendors like Microsoft, Google or Apple will first try to find a way to lock their systems down.
Changing to a completely different kernel would be something else.
They already did a lot of that for the Linux port of SQL Server, which as I understand it is basically the same program running with a bundled compatibility layer that's basically an official Microsoft equivalent of WINE.
Just like MacOS.
Oh please no.
Hopefully the new OS will lead to less updates for Windows 10 being force pushed to my computer.
Yes, I'm still bitter about my Windows Insider experience. On the one hand, it's kind of my fault - I signed up for testing the beta release. On the other hand, holy shit. I dual-boot, and I didn't log into Windows for some ~3 months, during which my Insider build expired. After that, when I finally did try booting to Windows, I was greeted with a completely bricked, unrecoverable system: core DLLs had expired certificates, and _nothing_ would start, as code signing checks failed.
(This was a Windows 10 upgraded from Windows 8, and it was past the free upgrade period, so I ended up buying a new Windows 10 license. So in the end, they've managed to make money off me with this.)
I'm also not clear on why the Win10 start menu got so much hate. I delete all the tiles and it then seems not much different than prior start menus.
But for example, a user wants to look up or change something to do with the configuration. How do they go about choosing which of these to try on the right-click Start menu: System, Device Manager, Computer Management, Settings.
For me, on my current PC, typing up to "Visu" leads to "Visual Studio 2019", but adding one more character to "Visua" leads to "Visual Studio Code", which is what I wanted in the first place most of the time. No clue what the heuristics here are, but it's not predictable to me.
More troubling: "Che" leads to Microsoft's "Check for Updates", which is pretty much what I always want, but "Chec" leads to Java's "Check for Updates", which I kinda never want.
I can no longer predict to someone I'm guiding over the phone what typing something into the start menu will do. Even for me, I'll be typing something, and finish off a few keystrokes by muscles memory before hitting enter only to have it decide I really meant something else before I notice. And I suspect whatever heuristic uses the misfire as further ammunition to get things even more wrong in the future.
[1] https://www.theverge.com/2021/6/15/22535123/microsoft-window...
Mac style centered dock. LoL.
Microsoft: please just finish your shit before changing it again.
https://www.howtogeek.com/fyi/windows-10-still-wont-let-you-...
EDIT: I suppose there is a certain pressure to mess with the UI, so non-technical people will "see" the difference. Some changes have been genuine improvements, IMHO, like AeroSnap or the search field in the start menu, others have been disastrous (cough Windows 8 cough).
That's one of the worst offender. It opens a separate windows instead of searching in the menu itself, and returns a lot of crap (including web queries, wtf) except what it supposed to do: searching in installed applications. That can be done, at the expense of an additional click. Very poor UX by mixing concerns that belongs to different applications (Explorer and the browser).
I wonder if that's why even on a gaming desktop USBs default to "turn off power to preserve battery" which made my keyboard stutter, and I had to turn off this setting from Device Manager.
Sooooooo many updates.
Apologists will say it's fir new features and security, but it was just an annoyance. I don't even notice if my pixel gets updated.
Video games are the only thing keeping me on windows, plus last time I tried to set up a dual-boot with Ubuntu I somehow trashed the boot process of both OSs.
It should since it uses Wine under the hood, but the ease of use is obviously way worse.
Other AAA games aren't there due to complex, non-portable engines.
MANY AAA games work fine but their launchers don't (e.g., Blizzard, Origin).
All are shitty reasons for the games to not work. :p
I don’t even know what the Windows Lock Screen ads are for, but they feel in my face. Certain attempts to log in to Windows will also open Edge.
I think that is when you click the teaser text with the dots and just expect the location of the nice picture to unfold.
Maybe, but I bet it won't work for the simple reason that they'll do exactly those same things and add a few more equally stupid things too.
Always, always, follow the money.
> "forced updates"
The Windows security model is fundamentally flawed in the internet age. You should not need to reboot to update important files (until recently Adobe Reader would require full OS restarts for some updates; the fact that this was even allowed by the OS was a flaw in itself). People hate forced reboots, so they would just delay them indefinitely. Unpatched systems would get hacked, Microsoft would be blamed for it, reputation loss, money lost.
> unpopular Start menu design
They tried to merge desktop and mobile OSes to save development money and to migrate desktop users to mobile, to make more money.
> ads on the lock screen
Money. I assume, lots of it.
> bundled shitware games
Money. Again, probably lots of money.
TL;DR: These things will become worse and worse, not better.
I just hope they don't pull a Windows 8 again with Windows 11.
Now that macOS has moved on to 11, but is commonly only known by named releases, Microsoft is going to do the same...
I'm looking forward to the next Windows being named after natural features of Washington state
Disclaimer: not a Microsoft fanboy, just intensely skeptical of both of these corporations in general.
By all means keep a LTS version of Windows, but draw a line.
Especially with Apple as a largely successful counterexample.
Keep something around for the next decade (or two) that keeps old hardware running. Allow virtualisation for everyone else.
It does seem that Apple’s approach of aggressively throwing out support for features while designing their own silicon with none of the legacy support that Intel keep around for x86 has paid off. Rosetta 2 ‘just works’.
For enterprise, some version of Windows will probably always be needed. WSL has shown that MS can respond to the developer community and shows that they can do it well. For home users and gamers a fast and lean OS will help shift hardware. The former who will be tempted by Macs and the latter who don’t want bloat will want as little OS overhead as possible.
Somehow I doubt the New Microsoft will do it right though. They don't strike me as the kind of people who give a shit about compatibility and user experience the way Old Microsoft did.
Do you think the kernel needs to be re-written from scratch? Yeah, the current one has issues, but that seems like an unnecessarily large undertaking, and one that is also not likely to produce bug-free code. I'd have thought some kind of testing/fuzzing/formal analysis would be a better approach.
Do you think the Win32/WPF/whatever APIs need to be thrown out and some other way of interacting with the core OS services be put in place (e.g. porting the GTKx.y/Glib API?) with some kind of shim for backwards-compatibility?
By all means keep Windows around for enterprise but build a new OS that is forward looking and eschews backwards compatibility when virtualisation can be used instead.
Aggressively simplify the OS. Make it consistent with a UX that keeps the OS out of the users way. Contain software from vomiting itself across your system. Make things discoverable and consistent, don’t impose restrictions such as locking open files.
I’m coming from this as a user not an OS developer. I use a mix of MacOS, Linux and Windows from day to day. Windows is often a dinosaur and constantly gets in the way. Each new version of Windows is another layer of paint over an existing peeling layer. Certainly Windows can be performant and it would be foolish to throw it all out.
I understand a lot of this is hot air, and your question is asking about specifics. I’m coming from this based on my observations on how students and elderly relatives use their computers.
I’ve moved my parents to iPads. They’re simple and they can do whatever they want to get done. They can browse the web, watch video, FaceTime and see photos of their grandkids etc. At the worst I have to run an OS update for them. They always forget the passwords but TouchID takes care of that.
Meanwhile my father in law has his ongoing war on technology with lists of passwords, frequent manual backups, and lists of things that need to be fixed whenever we visit. The computer is a ticking time bomb to be feared.
My students frequently have no idea what a file system is. Files are scattered everywhere on disk and the cloud. They have no idea what a USB drive does and some think simply just plugging one in magically copies the relevant files somewhere.
Usually by the time I’ve finished with them they’re writing code or running WSL or playing with a raspberry pi or whatever.
So we have this gap. There is the older generation where computers are scary and they’re happy with simplified but robust devices. There is the younger generation where most of them live on their phone and have no clue how computers actually work. When they end up in a job they’ll plod along with excel and whatever enterprise software they need. It really doesn’t matter what version of Windows or Office.
In the middle there are some people (of all ages) who actually have some degree of knowledge.
My solution is to make the desktop OS easier to use while still providing the complexity that is required as one gains experience. Right now Windows is intimidating and outdated.
Now I understand the idea behind technical debt, however backward compatibility is one of Window's biggest strength, so if a new OS has to be designed, it should be considered carefully.
Obviously open source drivers when needed or strict class compliance should be what manufacturers strive for today.
Can we please have 7 back, with its complete lack of built in ads, dark patterns ramming the Microsoft browser down your throat, telemetry everywhere (the calculator, really?), changes for the sake of showing that some manager did something rather than functionality (Rename this PC -> Rename this PC (Advanced))? Windows 10 still regularly shows clients as offline even though their internet connection is functioning normally, has trouble putting my laptop to sleep when I shut the lid (with ALL programs closed), and the recent 21H1 update caused a number of blue screens across our fleet.
Just fix your damn mess before you "hail a new era in personal computing", Micosoft.
Nevermind, I just crashed it with "sin(x)sin(y)<0"
(Microsoft PowerToys for XP had a graphing calculator but it doesn't support inequalities.)
I coincidentally had to fire up Sheepshaver recently so I've got it on hand. I put that inequality in the MacOS 8 Graphing Calculator and it gave me a nice looking checkerboard. Except I had to write it as "sin(x)sin(y)<0" or else it would think I meant "sin(xsin(y))<0", which is pretty itself.
https://www.desmos.com/calculator/izui2rwylh
Or do you suspect it might possibly be used for other purposes?
Software telemetry only gives us headaches
I switched from 7 to 10 when it was offered. I stayed with 10 for about one year, and I liked it thanks to all the fixes and improvements and despite the occasional quirk.
But after one year, I realized my computer didn't feel like it was mine anymore. I jumped to linux and never went back.
The approach is far more reasonable than what Windows does.
Not really. It's just too complicated of a "debate" (it's actually a non-debate) or discussion to dive into the differentiating factors that will assume different priorities for different people. Tradeoffs are everywhere and in everything and so is nuance.
Personally, I am growing tired of chasing Windows releases every few years so I will re-prioritize almost entirely around Linux's strengths.
For example, I have a 3700x / 5700XT computer. Windows 10 runs flawlessly without issues. Ubuntu, or any flavour of Ubuntu, runs like garbage. I have to fix screen tearing, slow boot, sleeping. Then from a clean install, open up firefox, and it crashes multiple times per day. It's not even close to stable.
Yet I run any flavour of Ubuntu on my Intel laptop and it's flawless.
Setup Manjaro on this same desktop, and it works flawlessly, yet on the same laptop if I use Wayland, it's completely broken.
Yet all the same hardware, never had an issue with Windows.
So my point is: Everyones experience is different. For some people they can set it up and fix it to be flawless, others just want to set it up and use it, not fiddle around.
If Microsoft would go back to pick up development from Windows 7, or Windows 3.11 for Workgroups, it would still be about abusing their customers.
I only use Windows for gaming these days but privacy is hardly an issue in Windows compared to anything else.
This is like the reverse of eye-for-an-eye: pardon for a pardon makes the whole world innocent.
The issue:
"[Apple's] policy [is]: “You can also disable location-based system services by tapping on System Services and turning off each location-based system service.” But apparently there are some system services on this model...which request location data and cannot be disabled by users without completely turning off location services."
Apple's response:
“We do not see any actual security implications,” an Apple engineer wrote in a response to KrebsOnSecurity. “It is expected behavior that the Location Services icon appears in the status bar when Location Services is enabled. The icon appears for system services that do not have a switch in Settings”
"...“Ultra Wideband technology is an industry standard technology and is subject to international regulatory requirements that require it to be turned off in certain locations,” the statement continues. “iOS uses Location Services to help determine if iPhone is in these prohibited locations in order to disable Ultra Wideband and comply with regulations. The management of Ultrawide Band compliance and its use of location data is done entirely on the device and Apple is not collecting user location data.”"
No, I don't want your ads. No, I don't want your nagging. I want you to shut up and leave me alone. You're a tool that I bought, not my mother. I don't need you to nag me or give me advice.
Related gripe: When it wants you to do something, it offers you two options, "Yes" and "Ask me later". Conspicuously missing: "No, and never ask me again". It won't let me say no, just later. Grr.
As a developer, I'd be happier than anything if my work just let me have a bare-metal Linux machine to do my work on.
I also enjoy Windows as a development platform quite a bit. It has made me a LOT of money in the last two decades so I can't complain. I like Linux a lot too, no need to only like one or the other.
I don't know about Vista, but in my experience both XP and 7 have been very stable as long the hardware was reliable and no messy device drivers were in use (which includes AV software).
That being said, Windows 10 did a few things I liked, too.
SP1, allegedly, fixed a lot of those problems, but by that time Vista's reputation was beyond repair.
The driver situation might have been made worse by the transition to 64-bit. I remember a friend of mine tried XP 64bit back in the day, and the system crashed constantly because some driver had been written with the assumption that a long is exactly 32 bits wide or something like that.
As far as Windows goes, I really liked 7. The UI was reasonably pretty and useful, performance was not too bad, compared to earlier versions, security was much better (or so I'm told, not being an expert).
I think it says a lot about Microsoft that they constantly move around the 'search with Bing from the start menu' setting, and make it harder to find every time. They know we turn it off, and they don't want us to.
It's as if the Windows team is trying to throw random shit to the wall to see what sticks instead of trying to do slow and steady improvements.
Apparently Win10 has some serious improvements over Win7 under the hood, but those technological improvements don't count much if the user facing parts are quickly deteriorating.
Lots of security improvements since Windows 7 with Windows Defender.
Didn’t MS also improve font rendering?
Two year old Win 10 work PC install committed suicide after updating few months back. Blue screen on boot. Spent more time "troubleshooting" that issue than reinstalling win 10 after giving up.
I have to use Windows to play. If the cloud gaming services supported Ultrawides, I may be off of it altogether.
I was on the Windows accessibility team, which was under the shell org. Not everything that we did in Windows 10 was bad. The Narrator screen reader built into Windows 7 sucked (my former colleagues and managers agreed); we made that much better in Windows 10. I wouldn't want to go back to Windows being the only platform where the only good screen readers were the third-party ones, and those products had to use ugly hacks to make Windows accessible.
Crisp 2D with borders, separations, edges, UI elements were not hidden, obvious scroll bars, AND distinct colouring.
As you referenced 'Classic Mode', it was VERY close to Win2k UI, but not the same.
Sadly, Microsoft won’t sell it to you. But it’s... out there.
The minimum volume license buy is 5 licenses. Any good reseller will sell you 1 copy of LTSC and 4 of the cheapest SKU in the catalog (usually $5-10 / ea) to get your volume license contract started. After that you used to be able to purchase piecemeal for 2 years before you need to fulfill the minimum purchase again. The licenses themselves are perpetual. With the program being killed I'd treat it as a one-time purchase and assume you have no further rights after October (I think) of this year.
I don't like it, but it's not too hard to do either. The trick is finding a reseller who will leave you alone after the purchase (no sales calls, etc).
That means the updates are smaller and less frequent, and rarely break anything. Personally, this is exactly what I want.
There are registry keys which will fully turn off automatic updates, if you want. I use these in Virtual Machines, since I don't boot those frequently and they're supposed to be disposable. I'm pretty sure they also work in Enterprise and Pro, btw.
Indeed you can; I don't recall any difference between LTSC and non-LTSC when it comes to enabling WSL (though I haven't tried since WSL 2 came around, so maybe things changed).
My Windows PC is a gaming machine pretty much exclusively, and it runs LTSC.
Honestly though, not having my hardware volume keys work is a small price to pay for not having the regular windows 10 garbage.
Or is it all proprietary Samsung silicon...
https://www.oo-software.com/en/shutup10
I am personally convinced that the windows developers all use macs and are not bothered by these glaring, in your face quality issues.
I run VMs on vmware workstation. Every 2 or 3 days I come in to find the system rebooted during the night. I've tried every knob possible to turn it off to no avail. Updates regularly reset all the power settings so it suspends after 30 minutes.
The lack of control over the machine's basic functioning makes it barely fit for purpose.
microsoft has watched people in the past NEVER update their operating system for whatever reason. too much of a pain, "no need", can't deal with the outage caused by a reboot, whatever.
microsoft has also been blamed quite voraciously for "insecure" operating systems allowing worms to spread, when patched systems don't even get infected.
so, because MS is damned if they do, and damned if they don't, Microsoft has chosen to "do" and keep people patched up.
oh the horror.
the culture of blaming Microsoft for things that you or your installed applications do is the cause for this attitude Microsoft has about users not knowing what's good for themselves. THEY DON'T KNOW WHATS BEST; Not when it comes to security. We as users have demonstrated this over and over again.
So MS err on the side of caution, and essentially force updates.
and, yes, Microsoft change things, for reason(s) that you are not aware of, because either a new feature requires a change in a supporting subsystem, or because they believe they've discovered a better way to do something, or through extensive user testing they have discovered a better UI paradigm. or maybe just because they want to.
look, things are NEVER going to remain the same from year to year. your "the good old days" were someone else's "this new stuff sucks so much, why did they change it, it was fine" and that will be true so long as humans use things others create.
sometimes the decisions Microsoft makes are good. sometimes they are bad. yes, the correct decision FOR YOU is crystal clear FOR YOU, but guess what? other people exist, and what's best for them is something else.
so the majority get better representation. positively and negatively. I hate many decisions Microsoft has made, and I recognize that there is no way to please everyone. It is amazing to me how many people do not understand this.
(in this entire comment, I am using the royal "you" and I am not talking about any specific individual.)
do you really believe that they AREN'T working on this? of course they are. the field of software development is extraordinarily young. we still don't know how to do things very well, and we're still discovering new ways to know we aren't doing things well.
> Linux and BSD machines manage it.
it's a matter of target value, and the number of people who would be inconvenienced enough to pay a random to unlock their files on Linux is FAR smaller than for Windows. So attackers go where the money is. Governments overwhelmingly use Windows as a desktop OS as well. Attackers go where the secrets are. etc.
And when you count remote exploits capable of remote code execution, last I read there had been slightly more of those on Linux than Windows. don't quote me on that until I find a source.
> Remote 0-days don't come by that often.
yes they do. not all of them get media attention, though. the most recent monthly patch from MS for Windows 10 included fixes for six of them. All were actively being exploited. SIX.
But does hijacking of servers create that kind of publicity? Sometimes companies have to admit that they have been hacked because of data leak. But do they publicly admit for every breach? Is it in private companies interest to go public with that kind of information? And if they do, does it reach non-technical newspapers?
There was a good thread about Linux kernel security today, a slideshow and video. TLDR; many unsafe practices because of C, bad project management to track bugs, triage bugs, correctly applying patches, correctly map patches with CVEs
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27513149
It has been working flawlessly for the past two years and has survived multiple feature upgrades.
What it does is override the call to the executable that schedules the reboot using the Windows built in debugging tools.
One line registry patch and the executable is redirected elsewhere.
0: https://lazyadmin.nl/it/how-to-stop-automatic-restart-win-10...
Is that too hard to discover? Do you use a Home edition? (Obviously if you use any unsupported registry hacks it can revert to default behaviour any time...)
But whatever the actual case, it's not at all obvious what triggers the reboots or why. It doesn't even have the courtesy to ask. It just does it and loses all my current work and VM states. The deliberate removal of direct user control is absolutely nuts. I didn't buy my computer with its primary purpose being applying Windows updates and rebooting. It's there for me to use for doing work, and it's failing at that by placing Microsoft's whims above my needs.
NEVER has a Microsoft patch ever reset my power settings to re-enable standby after X minutes. I have dozens of machines that I use between home and work. never once has that happened.
there's something else going on
Until recently, I was having major issues with every update resetting network and sharing settings, which essentially caused shared folders to become invisible to other computers on the network. It was a real pain and I'm glad they seem to have fixed whatever was causing it.
I have also hit this behavior and it is shocking - I gave a relative a laptop that should get 7 hours of battery life, but she was getting maybe 2 (and the laptop would get boiling hot) because the power mode defaulted to "performance". I fixed it for her when I visited but it reset itself after I left - a condition it remained in until the computer died from chronic overheating. It's scandalous.
This is my biggest pain points of windows 10. Why is it OK for windows to change my default image viewer everyday, with the some obscure message "there is a problem with your image viewer, we changed it to preinstalled image viewer from Windows"? Why? My image viewer is running perfectly OK, it has never crashed. I don't understand it at all.
https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20170517-00/?p=96...
Set your wifi as metered.
That's it. It'll tell you about updates, but not auto-download them, until like 6 months or something have passed. It'll even actually fail to download them sometimes, even when you click the download button... but un-metering easily fixes that.
And yeah, Cortana was one of the first things I killed off after getting a windows machine again, though I don't remember for sure how. It's so bad.
N.B. same guy, different account because passwords are hard.
The new and improved setup gave us a crap start menu (apps vs programs etc), all sorts of crap defaults that no one would ever want, endless advertising disguised as "helpful" prompts. Did you know internet explorer is 10x faster than chrome? Did you know IE has been replaced by edge which is even faster than IE was? etc
Without mentioning that the only way to create a local user is to setup windows without connecting it to the internet.
And without mentioning the amount of nagging, ads and spam that Windows users have to withstand. Like, the other day Edge reappeared on my taskbar by itself and reset itself as the default browser. And how many times do I need to confirm that yes, I am not crazy, I want to use another browser?
It’s a pity, because under the crust of shit, there’s a good OS with wonderful software compatibility that spans over decades and that is, overall, quite stable. Too bad it is constantly trying to bother its users.
------
I'm all for "you shouldn't need a Microsoft account to use your computer", but if you want to you use the locked down mode that is specifically FOR tight integration with MS's services and limiting you from everything else....needing a Microsoft account seems to make sense.
Why are you using S mode if that's not what you want?
Why not boot from a Windows 10 ISO and install Windows Home from there? As an added bonus, it would be a lot cleaner without all of the Dell junkware as well.
Free clue for Microsoft: I know you keep wanting to "leverage" your base of Windows installs into more income in other areas. But when you use leverage, your users feel forced. And we don't like it. Stop it. You're pissing off your customers.
Or like the man said, "You can't win, Gates. The more you tighten your grip, the more computer systems slip through your fingers."
(Yes, I'm calling out Gates. It started under him, decades ago.)
I’m sure he’s quaking in his boots, former Slashdotter.
The old era of personal computing was actual personal computing. If you want that MacOS is the closest commercial OS, or use Linux or BSD if you have more tinkering tolerance.
But I guess you can pay more and get the Professional version and have less garbage...
I can't comment on recent Windows-related event as XP was the last version of Windows that I used and even back then I wasn't happy about all the "spyware" that came with it. I can only imagine it's gotten worse since then.
That’s just not true. I wish it were but much of the real pro software you can’t get in Linux doesn’t worn.
Just because some games are running more or less stable, doesn't mean you can run complex software with it.
I said "pretty much any" not "every" since we're talking about regular usage of a computer. OP didn't mention anything in particular so I suggested three alternatives. Before you start calling people out you should first define what "complex" is.
Recent Photoshop is either silver or garbage depending on the version. Premiere is listed as garbage for all versions.
Newest iTunes is bronze.
I’m not even trying to find bad examples. I’m just poking around in their public db for popular software that doesn’t exist in Linux. I’ve run into this every time I try to use wine for real — it’s never worked well. It’s also a really hard problem! You basically need to re-write Windows and all of it’s related components, which one of the worlds biggest companies has spent decades on and however many billions of dollars. But it’s not like “pretty much any” windows software will run well. It’s quite selective outside of games.
So claiming "pretty much any" windows software runs in wine, is the "very bold assumption", not backed up by reality.
Because yeah, there is a lot of windows software somewhat running ... but somewhat running is not enough, when you want to work with it.
I find myself in an awkward situation where I don't like any of the three major desktop operating systems for different reasons. It's more a matter of picking the one that's less bad. Currently for me that's Linux for work, Windows for games, and Mac for a laptop.
I need a new laptop next year. I'll probably go for a Windows laptop where I can dual boot Linux.
Printers, scanners, nvidia graphics cards, dual monitors have all been a huge source of issues for me.
Then a lot of stuff is just glitchy and fixing it is a pain. For some reason QT from apt was completely messed up for me, so I had to compile and install it myself, which was non trivial.
The BSD OSes are often overlooked as a desktop platform despite being very easy to run and configure. They have excellent built-in documentation that the rest of the community could take inspiration from. They are a complete OS built and maintained together, rather than a distribution of disparate software from various sources bundled around a kernel. Even this reason alone is enough to make them very cohesive, and easy to understand. Their default installations are minimal (perhaps even to a fault in some users' eyes) allowing you to be clearly aware of the software that gets installed. Managing and configuring services is, IMO, far easier than on Linux (depending on distribution).
This introduction to OpenBSD is a good video to watch get a bit of an idea of it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EkDVKthufAM
I understand that it's not for everyone, but I thought it's worth mentioning in case you hadn't looked at this family of OSes before, since I think they offer a huge amount of what Linux offers, but in a more cohesively-structured and simplified way. I'm definitely gradually becoming more invested myself (though still testing the waters hehe).
This all happened six months ago, which is the most recent attempt at using the "now user-friendly version" of linux that stretches back 20 years.
What exactly are you suggesting, that you experienced a problem so it won't work for anyone else?
People can give it a try, but shouldn’t expect that it’s all okay once it shows a wallpaper. Committing to something like OS requires a prior knowledge of operational risks. I think this.
—
ReactOS in a nutshell: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=U6d7E1uKSmg
They obviously make fun of it too shamelessly, but suggesting to use it… is it another level of trolling (no offense)?
Those are loaded questions, I'm quite sure I know the answers (yes and yes).
I'm happy Linux "just works" for you, but that hasn't been my experience.
Also, people can have legitimately different priorities. Some folks might want freedom from vendors badly enough to buy inferior but supported hardware, and/or get their hands dirty dealing with problems. At least there's a choice.
I now own a Macbook Air.
Which it was. Then it broke.
Linux GPU stuff is rough, but the above really helped. + Nix has a declarative way to configure the driver so other people did the hard part for me anyways.
Nix allows fearless Linux hacking (and thus, gaining of expertise.)
Not only that - Linux as a standard Debian or Ubuntu system did also become astonishingly beginner-friendly for people who do not like to tinker with computers, and just use them to read mail, edit documents, and browse the web. It's literally setting up once, send them the laptop, it works for five years or more, without any servicing.
The huge Gnome 3 schism, that lead to many different Gnome forks. And consequently GTK is more of a Gnome 3 toolkit rather than a universal toolkit, which will affect non-gnome GTK apps.
And if you manage to pick a desktop, hopefully by avoiding Gnome 3 because it constantly changes workflow and uses buggy JavaScript plugins, you realize that you will probably have Gnome 3 installed anyway because apps or the distro having dependencies to Gnome, if you don’t want to settle for old forks of those apps with less features.
And if you didn’t pick Gnome (or KDE) it is a good idea to install a compositor if you don’t like software rendered desktop like the good old Windows 9x days.
Be sure to turn the compositor off if you plan to play any games, especially if you thinking about playing on Wine. Or accept to always play in full screen. This will of course annoy you every time you need to look up something online.
If your game doesn’t run well, just add this unknown PPA that will installs nightly compiled graphics libraries (who wouldn’t?).
And if your computer freezes mid game, sorry you didn’t change the virtual memory size before because it is a fixed size. Tough luck.
And then of course the entire X vs Wayland situation.
So I haven't gone out of the way to install a compositor (are you talking a wayland compositor, or the older Compiz type stuff)?
But I have 2x1440p and 1x1080p and I've not noticed any perf issues, which I assume is what you're highlighting as the downside?
And I use all three major desktop OSes daily, so it's not that there's some blazing fast responsiveness to be had on Windows or OS X I'm unaware of.
> If your game doesn’t run well, just add this unknown PPA that will installs nightly compiled graphics libraries (who wouldn’t?).
This feels like five years out of date. Just pick a compatibility tool dropdown in Steam for most people. Lutris if you want something open source.
> And if your computer freezes mid game, sorry you didn’t change the virtual memory size before because it is a fixed size. Tough luck.
I haven't had a swap partition in years, and not once has it lead to a game crash.
My subjective feeling is that the snappiness is better in Windows than Linux and MacOS. I think that the pure desktop experience (moving & resizing windows, graphics, font rendering, login/logout, shortcuts, etc) is still unbeatable on Windows. What has gone downhill for Windows is the changes due to mobile & tablet adaptions and the cloud integration (Microsoft account vs local account etc).
I needed to install more up to date graphic libraries thru a PPA to avoid artifacts and weird rendering for a Steam installed game (Crusader Kings 3). Lutris is great, but to my understanding you need to manually install dxvk to get the best performance (someone can correct me on that (and Wine 6 broke a lot of things)). Also make sure you are running the correct gfx kernel module or otherwise hack your grub file.
Yes, you can disable swap entirely and hope it doesn't affect stability. By default Ubuntu creates a 2GB swap file, but if you are on a 16GB machine (not an unusual setup for a desktop computer) that can fill up pretty quickly and Linux will go into a swapping frenzy. You can't even ssh into the machine, just hard reboot or hope it recovers this hour.
When this happens the first time, it is not obvious that it is the swap file that is at blame for what happened. I'm not sure if it even exist a GUI for chaining the swap file size in Gnome (Disks app maybe?). But if you manage to change the swap file size, you have to decide, can I turn it off and hope nothing breaks or should increase it to match whatever RAM or more. It is weird that a desktop operating system ships with a feature that doesn't work.
This is not really true, and has not affected anything that I've seen. Basically every GTK desktop (including GNOME) has another separate widget library on top of GTK, to include its own widgets specific to that desktop. Also GTK3 is currently release frozen and will not be adding any more features, GTK4 is the current version.
>hopefully by avoiding Gnome 3 because it constantly changes workflow and uses buggy JavaScript plugins,
I haven't seen any desktop system that doesn't change workflow over time, or doesn't have some bugs in the plugins. That's a sad fact of life when you have hundreds of plugins made by various people, with varying quality. FYI KDE is also using javascript as a plugin language for the desktop, and for a number of other QML things, so it makes no sense to single out GNOME for use of javascript: https://develop.kde.org/docs/plasma/scripting/
>And then of course the entire X vs Wayland situation.
The situation with compositing should improve over time with Wayland, the idea there is to not ever turn off compositing (though the Wayland implementations are still optimizing this for the various edge cases).
GTK3 regressions from a GTK2 perspective
https://ubuntu-mate.community/t/gtk3-regressions-from-a-gtk2...
Horrible GTK3 / GNOME UI design is leaking into Ubuntu Mate applications in 20.04
https://ubuntu-mate.community/t/horrible-gtk3-gnome-ui-desig...
And then you have the terminal Termite
https://github.com/thestinger/termite
JavaScript can definitely work as scripting language for a desktop environment, but it doesn't work for Gnome in the current state.I have written about this topic before, see thread here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27195694,
quoting myself
and But the negatives in short are poor documentation, memory leaks, you end up only using the approved plugins (if you don't like to restart your desktop more than once a day) which of course negates the whole idea of a plugin system.It's a bit odd to read this sentence. GTK2 got its last minor release over 10 years ago, and was EOLed 6 months ago. It's a dead project. GTK3 is also feature frozen as of 6 months ago, and will not see any features brought back from GTK2. If you want to get some of these issues fixed, it would be best to start submitting patches to GTK4, or trying to find other solutions that will work there. Or, you could try to revive some of that GTK2 code yourself, although I wouldn't recommend it -- a lot of that code is very obsolete.
>Horrible GTK3 / GNOME UI design is leaking into Ubuntu Mate applications in 20.04
This is a design decision made independently by the MATE developers to update their app to a different design, no? I don't see what GNOME has to do with this. Regardless of your feelings on it, at least one person seems to have thought it was the right decision.
>And then you have the terminal Termite
I remember this issue from last time it was discussed, I think the Termite maintainer overreacted as a result of a very normal technical disagreement. I don't really witness them rejecting patches any more than any other project. I also disagreed with that developer's decision to fork on a technical level, I thought that was unnecessary and could have been avoided.
>But the negatives in short are poor documentation, memory leaks, you end up only using the approved plugins (if you don't like to restart your desktop more than once a day) which of course negates the whole idea of a plugin system.
Some people are actually working on the docs, please contribute if you are able: https://gjs.guide/
There have been issues with memory leaks in the past, but those are bugs that can pop up with any garbage collected language. I'm not sure what you'd expect them to do, besides do the normal thing, and fix the individual bugs whenever possible.
I hate that I always have to say this, but there is no alternative to only using approved plugins, on any plugin system. I don't know what you mean it negates it. In Javascript the crashes and hangs are usually from unhandled exceptions and infinite loops -- This is even worse with a C or C++ plugin system, because those are memory unsafe and can cause bad segfaults. If the javascript is causing segfaults then that's probably a bug that should be reported.
https://github.com/Sycnex/Windows10Debloater
It is not perfect, some stuff remains as Microsoft regulary "improves" their bloatware setup. But it makes windows so much more bearable.
https://www.getblackbird.net/
Been using this since release
Gaming is quite possibly going to be an issue. Proton has made great strides, but some games just don't work well or at all.
the people who fix bugs aren't the same people who make corners rounded it design control panel user interfaces or rename things.
the entire company doesn't focus on a single thing at a time.
I also have to question whether these UX changes provide any benefit to users at all. They strike me as nothing but a cost to users in terms of familiarity and discoverability. Unless the new UI changes are somehow objectively better in any of those regards, it's a net negative change. I know some people will say, for example, "you can change the task bar back to where it was". However, apparently less than 5% of users ever change default settings, according to an unfortunately-anecdotal article[0], so a change like this presumably decides how ~95% of people will use the OS.
I can't wait to explain to my 83 yr old uncle (who doesn't understand the difference between a website and an application on the computer) why everything just randomly moved over and looks way different, after he has spent years just getting familiar with basic usage of the computer to begin with.
[0] https://archive.uie.com/brainsparks/2011/09/14/do-users-chan...
Windows 2000 - Good
Windows ME - Bad
Windows XP - Good
Windows Vista - Bad
Windows 7 - Good
Windows 8 - Bad
Windows 10 - Good
Windows 11 - ????
If so, there's the option of running Windows in a VM on your Linux machine, and having seamless Windows apps on your Linux desktop.
It's a bit like what MS are going to offer with their WSL, but in reverse. I've never tried it, but it might work, and give people the best of both worlds.
Imagine MS porting the _official_ windows libs to linux and FOSSing them so we don't have to play WINE roulette and get some official compatibility. It's not inconceivable, MS already realises their future is in SaaS, not desktop OS, this is an opportunity for them to finally throw in the towel and focus on their future.
... but it's probably not gona happen, they can easily keep eating the cost of windows and keep it as leverage just in-case, user experience be damned.
"Run Windows apps such as Microsoft Office/Adobe in Linux (Ubuntu/Fedora) and GNOME/KDE as if they were a part of the native OS, including Nautilus integration."
...now I'm wondering how many of the average consumer would even recognize that.
Windows 7 - Good
Windows 8 - Bad
Windows 8.1 - Good (a bit)
Windows 10 - Bad
Windows 11 - ???? (Good, hopefully)
That matches my perception more closely tbf
They have a lot of people concentrating on the things they don’t need to be done and very few on the things that do need to be done.
Unfortunately it is really hard for game development companies to develop on Linux as most of the software used by artists require Windows to function. Hopefully one day my company will be able ditch Windows completely but it might take another decade.
Linux works on the servers because lots of companies don't wanna be locked into MS offerings and pay for building all their ecosystem around Linux by their business profit.
Such business doesn't exist for desktop Linux and that's the only way to make it happen. It's also a tough job. See Android whose development has been paid for over the years still gets forked and fragmented due to the fact that apparently Linux doesn't maintain a consistent HAL (perhaps so they can refactor easily idk).
So this Linux desktop dream just won't come true when there's no stable business paying for the development.
https://www.zdnet.com/article/open-sources-eric-raymond-wind...
I installed Ubuntu 10 minutes later.
> I installed Ubuntu
I did this once and regretted it. Except for OS itself, nothing quite worked reliably, and you're basically the only person who can help them if it has problems.
I agree that many won’t like Linux due to it being different, but it’s at least functional in this case. The web browser feels the same, at least, which is enough for casual users.
I'm only half joking here :-p
Similarly for versions of Microsoft Office products.
Hyper-v
Default notepad that understands linux style line endings
Default ISO mounting support without having to download sketchy tools
Default ZIP support without having to download winrar
At the risk of sounding churlish, the last three can be done on earlier versions of Microsoft Windows, for varying degrees of downloading 'sketchy tools'.
Notepad.exe upgrade occurred last year I think? But one feels like Microsoft could have done that at any time in the past 3 decades. I suspect anyone who was hurt by this was likely to long since shifted to Notepad++.
Virtual Desktops are indeed a compelling feature, which I've relied on with KDE since last century -- though I still haven't tried them on a Windows box.
Hyper-V -- I've used this a few times on Windows 10, though I believe it's not available on the most common version of the OS, right? I'm using Pro and Education versions - which do have the feature.
Luckily I said compared to Windows XP, because Hyper-V's been available since Windows 8 / Server 2008.
So the solution on Windows XP or other old Windows versions was to change all text file associations from Notepad to Wordpad and everything was fine.
MacOS is still the most advanced desktop environment for computing but I'm no longer convinced it will even be an option 10 years from now so I just want Microsoft to focus on replicating the best parts and throwing out the Windows cruft.
Saying this as someone who returned to Windows after a 10+ year hiatus because I needed powerful GPUs for my work.
Network interface bridging
Per-application volume control
Hyper-V
Drivers that run mostly in user space so crashes and updates don't require a reboot
- Better bluetooth integration (N/A in XP? Unreliable in Win7?)
- Snipping tool (Don't remember if in XP, definitely part of win7)
- Improved automatic driver detection (Drivers were pretty rough in XP, okay in win7 but still needed manufacturer installs for many things)
- Built in camera app? (Voice recorder was always there for audio testing)
- Built in free mail app (outlook always cost money)
- Better out-of-the box browser (windows edge vs. IE)
- Free, good quality firewall (windows defender, came later in Win7 as an update not in XP)
I found it to actually be a difficult exercise which either says something about my memory of the old OS's or it reveals a distinct lack of dramatic changes.
outlook express was free on xp
A couple more
- Clipboard history - this is kind of a hidden feature and has to be turned on but is very helpful.
- One drive integration - this works pretty well if you do use one drive.
- Game Bar (built in screen recording)
- Built in SSH
- Virtual Desktops
- Action Center (OS level notifications)
It doesnt come with any shit on it (windows store, metro, xboxlive, cortana etc etc.) MS have also promised It will not receive any updates that change its functionality but will receive security updates, for 10 years. You can only get it if u buy in bulk tho. Or, u can just get it from tpb.. Considering MS are intentionally not selling by far the most user-respecting version of their OS to regular folks, it behooves us to pirate it.
Here's the 2015 story covering this date announcement, which bears no relation to recent rumors at all: https://www.ghacks.net/2015/07/20/microsoft-to-support-windo...
Pretty sure that article's been out of date for a while.
The newer understanding is that Microsoft will release a new feature update every 6 months, and support each of them for 18 months. Almost certainly, this big refresh being announced soon will continue that model: All Windows 10 PCs will be eligible, support for existing releases will be for 18 months from their release, etc.
For a technology-focused community, BBC reporting on technology isn't adequate. And a bunch of blogspam articles have "covered" this "news" as well. I think it's a sign of bad journalism.
Sheer inertia and brand cachet are carrying the BBC.
I'm not sure which outlet is entirely trustworthy in the UK currently.
Ahahahahaha.
In the past I would have said The Guardian is okay, but right now they really hate trans people.
Channel 4 news are a small team with a heck of a punch - but there is not a lot of daily output.
They all have a slant but if you know you can still read their articles and get something out of it.
It seems to be based on a recent change in Microsoft's product lifecycle documentation.
Here's the story in the Register, published earlier than the BBC article: https://www.theregister.com/2021/06/14/microsoft_windows_10_...
It's not clear from any of these articles what has changed because the date hasn't.
Windows 10 Home and Pro has a "Retirement Date" listed as 10/14/2025.
Furthermore, it's just the default commitment Microsoft makes to businesses when they release new software. The statement isn't really taking into account the reality of the Windows-as-a-Service approach Microsoft takes now.
For instance, Windows 10's original build, 1507, you can see, ended support back in 2017, only about two years into the lifecycle.
The next version of Windows, whatever they call it, releasing this fall, will carry the same 18-24 month support cycle, have new feature releases released every 6-12 months, and "Windows 10" will seamlessly upgrade into it.
Apart from LTSB/LTSC releases, which have their own retirement dates (Windows 10 2019 LTSC is supported until 2029, for example), basically everyone will be off of "Windows 10" as it's currently called long before 2025, but your PC licensed for Windows 10 will still be updated and supported on the newer OS.
You have made a strong claim of incompetence here and I would like to see you present some equally strong proof.
Note that the BBC article states:
> Mr Nadella and chief product officer Panos Panay will launch the new OS at a virtual event on 24 June, with Microsoft now facing stiff competition not just from Apple but also from Google
... which implies they have direct information about the launch of the new version.
Why would the BBC fabricate this information about the upcoming event? If you have evidence that this statement is incorrect, I encourage you to present it.
How am I going to get used to it now, if they're already replacing it?
Apple is pretty good at ignoring enterprise demands and I think it shows in their products.
The only reason I don't go to linux entirely is software like Fusion360 which are windows/mac primarily. Kicad is already better than Eagle for electronics design (especially 5.99) and I have some hope that Freecad will do some updates which will make it a serious competitor in the CAD field.
I've used freecad and and it.. works for simple stuff, but it has a really long way to go.