I assure you that Ballmer would at the very forefront of aping the latest disreputable, scummy dark patterns while missing the point and forcing tasteless, trashy, ineffectual money grabs that do much to waste your time and little to benefit Microsoft or anybody else.
But they wanted to. Billy G was still hovering around pouring cold water on some really stupid ideas. He finally relented on getting rid of the start menu and that turned out to be a total disaster.
It's such a shame because Windows is a good operating system for a lot of desktop use cases that happens to be smeared with shit all over the user interface. Honestly I'm expecting them to introduce mini advertisements in the task bar any time soon. It's not like those pixels are being used for anything when there aren't many windows open right?
Bad time to be pushing this crap with the Linux desktop wooing the gaming/ power user overlap crowd now that steam deck is on the
scene. I have been using Windows my whole life but now I have a PC dedicated to Linux for the 1st time and I'm thinking about seeing one up for my wife, as I'm sure Linux will be perform better on the older laptop I'm considering 'upcycling'. People forget that tech trends often flow outwards from the nerds who will actually try something new, then evangelize it to the world - see chrome for example
Yes 2023 is sure to be the year of the Linux desktop. (/s)
The reality is the computer form factor involving a keyboard is slowly becoming more and more of a niche. Windows has a lock on this niche for business and gaming. For other home use there is strong competition from apple and for education there is strong competition from chromebook.
I'm never buying another Chromebook and Chromebox because Google sunsetted my perfectly fine working laptop and Chromebox and now it can't do things like play streaming movies from HBO Max because the chrome version is too low. Spotify doesn't work either. Leaves few things left to do with it haha.
Can you give some examples of "things which do not work"? Seeing how as I've been using Linux for close to 30 years and have it running on loads of different types of hardware with more or less everything working - yes even Bluetooth - I'm always somewhat surprised by these problems which fail to haunt me.
I think some people just don’t even bother to resolve an issue. Maybe it’s not even broken but just reflexively assumed to be broken if something isn’t immediately as they expect it to work. My parents both use Linux daily and rarely ever need me to provide any support. Ubuntu or Debian has worked out of the box on every machine I’ve touched over the last 10 years. Avoiding nvidia graphics is probably the secret to success though, and may be the issue responsible for many people who have a much more negative view of Linux “just working”
Wi-Fi is usually wonky and just various other things like video drivers etc.
Here is the laptop you wanted me to try to install Linux on lol. Who has time for this shit? I just want to use the computer not futz around with it constantly.
Like I said, spend $99 on MacBook Air, receive it, turn it on, it works. That’s all I care about. I don’t even like apple products really but I just want something I know will work.
That is an ARM laptop, which means you have an especially low chance of installing Linux easily. Get an x86 Chromebook and you would probably have less issue, but yes, you may still have some hardware issues (especially since Chromebooks have spotty desktop Linux support). Get an off-the-shelf x86 laptop and you probably would be fine; maybe you will have a few issues. But instead of faulting Linux, consider this? Could you install Windows on this same laptop? Probably not. In fact, on many laptops, hardware support is limited on Windows without vendor drivers (although, there is a chance that this has gotten less bad these days).
If you went and bought a used laptop that has official Linux support, like an XPS 13, then you could also open it, turn it on, and have it work with zero issues with Linux—the same way as a MacBook Air. Try Hackintoshing a random laptop from Best Buy and I think you will encounter similar issues with macOS.
For you, maybe not. For me it has been in the running - and mostly in the lead - for close to 30 years. There's Linux on this iMac, on the Thinkpad sitting next to it, on the server these connect to, on the phones lying on the desk, on the tablet. For all I know there is Linux in the washing machine as well, I never bothered to look. It seems like Gates' vision of "information at your fingertips" has come true, the only thing "missing" is Windows. I do have a few virtual machines on the server for the few packages (VAG ELSA, looking at you...) which don't run well on Linux/Wine but these only get started every other blue moon.
By the way, the Chromebook you mentioned runs Linux. Google might eventually port this to Fuchsia but this remains to be seen.
I think OP's point is that there's one more major use case — gaming — for which Windows has a newly viable competitor. It's not that Linux is going to replace Windows, but that Windows could suffer a death by a thousand cuts. I'll note that more and more offices that I encounter seem to be switching to Chromebooks.
People keep saying this and then run into minor problems becoming bigger problems because frequently used programs end up being unusable or 3rd class citizen, behind both mobile and Mac users.
Unless Linux is braindead easy to use without frustrations, it won't happen. Gamers pay more for lesser ease of access increases.
I mean, this is pretty easily explainable.
People have grown up around Windows. The problems for the most part don’t change over time, so people have gotten used to them and have developed their own tried and true ways of doing something that sidesteps the problems they had.
Switching to Linux brings with it a whole new swath of problems and fixes Windows problems so not only are users seeing new issues, their workarounds now have to be worked around because whatever was wrong in Windows works in Linux. Add to that the fact that most Linux users are power users and instructions therefore lean towards that, and you’ve got a problem that also seems insurmountable to solve.
It’s the classic boiling frog dilemma. Windows has just had decades of heating water to get to where we are.
It's not 'every problem'. People know Windows. People understand most of Windows. They took years to do so, and they still run into problems. Now you ask them 'switch over to Linux, it doesn't have problem X', without understanding the average person doesn't want to invest the time or effort learning anything more complicated than downloading and installing a random .exe (why do you think phishing and malware are so prevalent in their infantile state?).
This is reinforced by most major apps which eventually become cross-platform starting out treating Linux as a 3rd class citizen. For games, Discord and Parsec come to mind, where the former took years, and the latter still doesn't allow hosting from Linux. Nothing about this reinforces the idea of Linux being easier to use. It's the opposite: it reinforces the mentality that Linux is still two decades behind, regardless what the reality may be.
How many complaints form when YouTube pushes a minor UI or UX change? Now multiply that by a few magnitudes of order. That is the problem we're dealing with, and no amount of chastising or belittling Windows users will change that (in fact, it does the opposite). Did people forget how Apple managed to get a foothold in the market despite their ludicrous prices and dev-unfriendly practices?
It's not even this. It's just that for vast majority of 'average' people, they just use whatever OS comes with their devices. "Installing an OS" is an alien concept for most people. So it is automatically either MacOS/iOS or Chromium/Linux (Chromebook), Android or Windows. That's it. And although Linux the kernel features in two of these, that's totally beside the point. The point is people mostly don't even know how to change their preinstalled OS, no matter how irritating it is. If it develops too many issues, they take it to the local tech shop who almost always will reinstall/reset the same OS and give it back.
The only people who use Linux are the tech oriented crowd, including gamers, who naturally tend to be more tech oriented than most. This is still a very small fraction of the world though. And this isn't changing unless a healthy fraction of devices and PCs come with Linux preinstalled. Even then a lot of people will complain and ask for Windows (or whatever) the very next day after purchasing their device.
> People know Windows. People understand most of Windows.
Not in my observation. They get something pre-installed, they click on things they know. I am always amazed by the fact that most don' t have the smallest mental image of how it works.
Many people highly value continuity, if it’s working it should keep working the same way for a very long time. Once a Linux computer is working, even if it’s more work to get it to that state, keeping it working is much easier than with Windows. Using updates to force major breaking changes should be a crime.
Why? Looking at top PC games lists of 2022, almost all of them are supported on Steam Deck. All the games I’ve played on there run fantastically well. On a sale I bought Assassin’s Creed Odyssey which is an older AAA game and Steam Deck even runs fine.
Since the announcement of the Steam Deck, Valve has made various promises to work with the AC providers to bring support to Linux. So far they have brought support for Epic's EAC, and it seems they are working on bringing it for other titles as well.
The FPS in the top 100 currently most popular games on Steam[0] and their status [1]:
#01 CS:GO - native
#04 PUBG - anticheat
#05 CoD MW2 - anticheat
#06 Apex - Works (it has anticheat that works on Linux)
#07 TF2 - native
#09 Rust - Works
#12 Destiny 2 - anticheat
#21 Rainbow 6 - anticheat
#22 DayZ - Works (it has anticheat that works on Linux)
#26 Warframe - Works
#69 Payday2 - Works
#78 Arma 3 - Works (it has anticheat that works on Linux)
#79 CS:S - Native
Native or working: 9/13
Broken: 4/13
Non-steam or outside top-100:
OW2 - Linux is second class and not actively supported - but Blizzard have unblocked Linux support when issues were reported
Battlefield (all?) - Works
CoD (before MW2) - Works
Gundam Evolution - anticheat
I'm probably spectacularly unlucky as I play Siege, Destiny 2, CoD MW2, Hunt Showdown (#63), and the occasional Fortnite (EGS) and Valorant (Riot), none of which work.
Battlefield 2042 is on Steam but not supported, though I'm not sure if that's the anti-cheat solution or Proton.
With Win 11 I get Micro-stuttering which makes gaming a nightmare. I’ve given up on getting it fixed. I wouldn’t put it past Microsoft to accidentally kill their cash cow via an accumulation of small mistakes and a loss of key competence.
Dunno man, I’ve been using Linux on the desktop for almost 3 decades. It’s been ok for me :) conversely I can’t stand using windows for more than a few minutes - luckily I don’t have to do this often.
If you're a veteran Linux user, you probably know where to look for config files and how to hack them. Trying to use Linux using GUI only, whichever you choose, is awful. It's like the designers copied the worst ideas from both Windows and MacOS on purpose and then added some of their own.
You don't need to hack config files. The big DEs have GUI settings for pretty much everything macOS or Windows does. The only reason it might not seem like it is tutorial websites where it's easier to post a one line command then screenshots for 7 different GUIs.
"it's easier to post a one line command then screenshots for 7 different GUIs"
Yeah, that's the thing. It often feels GUIs on linux are meshed together from at least 7 different styles and paradigms and too often they are indeed made like this.
So in Ubuntu for example I sometimes had to click left to close a window and sometimes right.
What laypersons want, is one single way to do things, that works.
But you just won't get far, without the terminal. That is, things do run pretty much out of the box if you are lucky - until they don't. And then good luck trying to fix it without the terminal. I can parse and usually fix cryptic error messages and logs, but my father (who is a trained engineer, but no english speaker nor programmer) cannot.
Unless of course there is a driver issue. I seldom can fix them and I encountered too many over the years.
In either case, I am lucky that linux exists and I am now off to try out EndeavourOS ..
I get this effect much worse on windows. Right click the volume icon in the task bar and look through the windows you get. There's three different styles dating back to Windows 95!
Flip through stuff on the control panel and you'll get the same mash of code heaved forward from the 90s. It's a bad look, and I've always been so confused why Microsoft doesn't do anything about it. Seems like a great pet project for some nth level middle manager to get sweet bonuses for.
Do you remember the two control panels from Windows 8, where some settings were available only in one and others in the other? One did look quite modern.
I prefer using the GUI, but frequently find I have to hop back into the terminal to chmod/chown some file that's ended up without the appropriate permissions. I think a casual user would probably give up at that point.
Yes. The only problems are that the control panels are incredibly illogical at best (this is one of the things I meant with the "worst ideas from both Windows and MacOS and some of their own), and often just don't seem to work or need to be used in a specific non-intuitive way. Command line and config files are the way to stay sane and get things done.
In short, Proton is making pretty good progress and anyone can check their own Steam library with ProtonDB, to see how many of the titles they care about are likely to work.
Out of the popular mainstream games, around a half will work on Linux, whereas in the case of my Steam library (mostly indie titles) that figure is closer to 75%. This is no doubt thanks to shipping games now being simple in most of the popular game engines out there (like Unity, Unreal and even Godot). However, some games have the occasional bug, whereas others just straight up refuse to launch.
Also many users don't use things like AMD Software, but I personally didn't really find a good alternative for it on Linux, to limit my GPUs power usage and alter the fan curve, CoreCtrl coming close but not quite being a viable replacement: https://gitlab.com/corectrl/corectrl
Back to games, there will be issues with either really old niche titles that you might want to play, or many of the modern games that have multiplayer components (and anti-cheat systems), or sometimes even two games from the same publisher/developer might have one of them be available on Linux but not the other (e.g. War Thunder works but Enlisted doesn't).
In short, Linux is definitely getting better and might already be sufficient as a desktop daily driver even for the folks who want to do some gaming, but isn't a 1:1 replacement and some things just won't work for a variety of reasons. That said, claiming that "The Year of the Linux Desktop" might eventually come no longer feels delusional - it might just be 5-20 years until we get there for regular folks.
This probably wouldn't have happened without Valve's involvement, as well as all of the people who work on Wine and other software like that.
Does that ultimately matter? Proton/WINE etc. create a compatibility layer for Windows on Linux, and WSL/Cygwin etc. creates a compatibility layer for Linux on Windows. If one is cheaper and offers less bullshit, the other one is threatened. It's a moat coming down.
If you search for Windows XP, Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8,...., versus Linux, you will find similar arguments being made as prophecy of the great migration.
previously there wasn't an extremely profitable, market leading, privately owned gaming company with a founder that is completely and utterly determined to ditch Microsoft
and share the result of that freely with the world
I am an employee of a well known Fortune 500 consulting company, but definitly not Microsoft, better luck with your search next time.
Microsoft is a company, there is no such thing as honour for business, only money and profits.
Same applies to dumb quotes like "do no evil" and similar.
You're right, Windows isn't the main target platform for AAA game studios, Playstation, XBox, Switch, iOS and Android are the ones briging big bags of money home.
A lot of games run on Linux natively and newer games are using Vulkan. We can't help that the feds didn't go after Microsoft for paying game devs to try to lock non-console games to Windows.
M1 Macbooks are alien technology compared to Windows (performance and battery life) or Lunux (professional app support) ones. The main barrier to switch is different keyboard layout — after a month of using Mac as a home PC (switching from workplace-issued Linux) unfamiliarity with keyboard is the main hurdle, especially on non-English layout.
On the contrary, Linux is in a good position for the same reason you think it isn't. As the desktop/laptop market shrinks to advanced users, it loses the long tail of users who weren't technically capable enough to switch. At the same time, WINE/proton and even some native ports have vastly improved the gaming scene on Linux, and a decent chunk of non-gaming applications too. Sure, there will always be certain business applications that refuse to work on anything but actual Windows, but Linux works for a decent and growing part of the shrinking niche that is "real computers".
Just played some games on Linux Steam yesterday. It works so smooth. The Steam client is actually buggy at times with a tiling WM, but all the games worked great.. even the oned with Proton.
It's actually amazing how well games work under Proton. Even a significant number of multiplayer titles just work, despite anti-cheat. There's some "random problems" sometimes with some titles, sure... but that's also true on Windows. Interestingly the problematic titles are more or less exactly opposite to Windows - new titles tend to work well on Windows and perhaps have issues on Linux (requiring some specific launch options or Proton version, perhaps graphical glitches). Meanwhile older titles are often problematic on Windows, but are less so on Linux. Might just be my selection bias though.
> Sure, there will always be certain business applications that refuse to work on anything but actual Windows
I disagree with this statement, especially in the case where there's somebody motivated enough to patch Wine to support specific applications.
At the end of the day, Windows applications expect a set of interfaces. As long as those interfaces exist and work as expected, the application will work.
Until and unless Microsoft Office products are on Linux natively and are supported by Microsoft, Linux will never be a mainstream operating system. And that's never going to happen.
The web based Office 365 my university gives us seems to work as well on Linux as any other platform AFAIK (unfortunately that's still not perfect). It did claim to need Edge for some things, but that's relatively minor.
This is becoming less and less true every day. Both online office 360 and gsuite are popular in offices these days with no ms office installed on the device. Outside of specific business roles, I haven't seen it in a long while. I've even run into a medical clinic running on libreoffice.
My Android phone runs native Microsoft Office apps, so we are half-way there.
I am just waiting for Microsoft to give up on Windows-on-Arm and instead create a Microsoft-branded Linux distribution that has an actual Windows subsystem for Linux (that is, a compatibility / emulation layer similar to Wine or Proton to run legacy Windows software).
Decades of backward compatibility makes Windows a resource hog. I do not think it can make the jump to Arm or RISC-V easily.
Ironically enough I've found that O365 works far better on Firefox and Chrome on Linux than it does on those browsers on Windows, and Microsoft O365's support team warn against even attempting to use Windows 10 and Edge.
Every business I've ever been part of in my entire adult life has used Google docs or libreoffice. I genuinely haven't seen MS office since high school.
I worked for a fortune 500, and they used a custom Unix type OS with libreoffice. We ended up using mostly Google docs though.
A lot of devs don’t want to tinker with Linux. Myself included. And this is disregarding all of the work places that only give out Windows or MacOS machines.
I use Linux. No tinkering required if you use a major distro. I used to like to tinker with stuff, but slowly my viewpoint changed. Most of the time these tweaks are just different, not better, and a waste of time. Worse, whenever you have to use a more stock configuration on another machine, you are fumbling around. These days I just use the defaults on almost everything, whether Windows, Mac, or Linux.
No tinkering required. Tinkering can be tempting and dangerous, but if you keep yourself in check it's just not a thing you need to do. Unless you install Arch, but then you deserve what you get. Just install Ubuntu or Pop and you'll be fine.
"No tinkering required" needs to come with a big YMMV. Most of the devs I've polled about their Linux experience matches the OP, they tried it and went back to Mac/Windows.
Even the majority of “command line devs” are satisfied by Mac or even WSL for their machines. The servers they connect to are almost always Linux, however.
Not me, I make it a habit to try Linux every year to see what the major distros are, and test their feasibility as a replacement for MacOS. I usually run into bugs and lots of necessary copy-paste from the internet to get random features working.
While there are still use-cases where the traditional laptop/desktop form-factor remains the answer and there are Windows users, Windows getting worse and Linux getting better will continue to see people migrate over.
No, there' won't be an explosion, it's a death by a thousand cuts. The bemused amongst us are wondering why Microsoft is the one holding the knife.
> it's not even close to as good as a full Linux desktop
I use "a full linux desktop" at work (Ubuntu 22.04 LTS) and the desktop UI bugs and limitations are a nightmare. Give me Windows and WSL any day in comparison. At least there I know that basic stuff like clipboard and screen sharing/capture always works flawlessly, and windows don't magically get stuck to one aspect ratio and nost wasting my time trying to google fixes for snap/wayland/apt bugs.
Sure, some of these bugs I encountered could be Ubuntu, or Gnome, or Wayland, or pipewire issues, but as an employee, I don't have time to distro hop at work in search for the Linux experience with the least amount of jank or find out which component of this bazaar engineering efort is the one responsible for this jank.
Sure, I don't see ads in my Ubuntu install, but it's 2022 and the clipboard in Firefox in Ubuntu still stops working randomly, which causes me way more productivity loss than seeing a candy crush icon in the Win start menu. Firefox bug tracker says the clipboard issue fixed on their end whenever this bug gets reported and says it must be now a Wayland issue, while Wayland devs say this is a Firefox issue, meanwhile me and severa other Ubuntu users are complaining about our clipboards being broken in FF. FML, it's 2022 and I still can't have a working clipboard on Linux, one of the most used basic features on any OS. "Year of the Linux desktop." Yeah.
Not to mentions the lack of hibernate(not sleep) on Ubuntu. I spend almost an hour trying various tutorials and command line incantations that had the risk at bricking my OS, to get hibernate working, and no cigar, and I realized Ubuntu really, really wants you not to use hibernate at all cost. I never thought it would be missing a basic feature so simple as "dump entire RAM contents to SSD, then at power on, copy them back to RAM and resume". Sure, Linux boffins will tell me this is a limitation due to the use of Z-RAM compression or something, but me as an end user, I don't care which technical decision has lead to this limitation, as it doesn't fix my problem of not having hibernate.
Ubuntu is bizarrely terrible for being the main recommended distro. I have to assume they're heavily focused on the server space these days. It even shows ads when doing cli software updates these days! That's part of what people are trying to get away from in the first place!
It amazes me how much mind share Ubuntu still has with people. A lot of the Linux community has left Ubuntu over the past 5 years, especially since the Snaps were added.
LinuxMint is a vastly better experience today because it's focused on being the best for desktop users, while Ubuntu isn't any more.
>It amazes me how much mind share Ubuntu still has with people. A lot of the Linux community has left Ubuntu over the past 5 years, especially since the Snaps were added.
Not people, Ubtunu is what my company's IT departament provides everyone in the backend team use on our managed ThinkPads. I could protest, nuke it and spend time switching to Mint or something else based on 22.04 LTS that IT could also manage, but then I'm the one on the hook for any issues that arise with that one, and let's face it, it's Linux we're talking, no distro is ever bug free, they all show some jank once the honeymoon period is over depending on your hardware and software use cases.
I’ve never had problems with the clipboard or sharing. Unfortunately it sounds like you should use X for a few more years if you have no tolerance for issues.
Yes, X11 has virtually no bugs, but switching to X11 messes up touch pad gestures and gives me nauseating screen tearing when scrolling content, especially on my portrait oriented monitor. And no amount of googling command line incantations for xorg.conf or 20-intel.conf has fixed it (plus, a lot of the suggested answers were straight up wrong and would have bricked my display output if I just copied them from SO without knowing some Linux display driver basics), so back to Wayland and clipboard and screen capture/sharing issues.
This is in now way a good user experience.
Windows still beats Ubuntu hands down for me in terms of having less annoying issues that kill my productivity.
Oh boy. I tried, really. WSL2 is good enough to test things and run docker, but as soon as you try to run X applications, remote in with ssh on your laptop, or try to use full power, the limitations become clear soon.
I tried, on the new job. I've dealt with windows for 6 months, but 2 weeks ago I was sick of it. There is always something not working right. If a computer is a bicycle for the mind, Windows 10 has training wheels and a hysterical helicopter mom screaming 'you're gonna fall!' all the time. Death by a 1000 papercuts. I've reformatted it and run kubuntu now. I will miss excel, and online outlook is not as good as the real thing, but these are sacrifices I am willing to make just to get rid of the whiney drug addict called windows 10.
I'm not going to say Linux is perfect. Plenty of dumb cuts in there too. But at least it treats me with respect, at least the KDE world does.
Ymmv, of course. The job is great enough to let each run his or her preferred OS. As a recent escapee from a hyper standardized environment, I am loving it
Strange take. WSL2 _is_ Linux, running in a hypervisor with proprietary APIs for acceleration [0]. You're not using an alternative to Linux, you're using Linux that's been vendor-locked to require Windows.
>People forget that tech trends often flow outwards from the nerds who will actually try something new, then evangelize it to the world - see chrome for example
trillion dollar marketing seems to be more important factor than "nerds"
see Linux for example
There's ofc Android, but people have no choice - you are either "rich" (outside US) and want to buy iphone or go with android
Off topic but I really wish the regular old mouse and scroll wheel would work ”normally” straight out the box on fedora/ubuntu/etc. It’s really such a horrible experience coming from Windows when using the mouse is all icky not having ”proper” (Windows default) acceleration on and scroll wheel scrolling one line at a time.
Like many people I really want to make the jump but still hang on to Windows via O&O Shutup 10.
I have been using Linux as my primary OS for many years, but this particular issue is stubbornly baffling. There are solutions of course but they are not really good.
I don't know what you're talking about, but I've never had any mouse wheel issues on Linux, when I dual booted daily so it had plenty of chances to compare. In fact I made sure I had the exact same mouse speed on both OS.
My wheel doesn't scroll a line at a time, and there are three acceleration modes for the pointer-default,adaptive and flat.
I keep hearing people complaining about Linux with the weirdest problems ever.
My latest attempt was back in Summer with Fedora 36 and a Logitech mouse. The default was one line at a time and I could not find a setting for it. (Apart from Firefox config but I need multiple browsers.)
Amusingly I even gave Chromebook (kind of a Linux) a proper try and with the scroll wheel it too scrolled a single line at a time.
The Year of Desktop Linux is as virtual machine running on top of Apple and Microsoft desktop OS, or having the complete userspace replaced like on Google OS offerings.
I've held on to windows just for gaming, but Valve has been making huge strides turning linux into a viable option for that. Whenever support stops for Windows 10, I may have to give it a try
Honestly, ubuntu is doing similar UX breaking crap... every two years you need to relearn where to set the static ip, apt-get is snap, or snap is apt-get or who knows what you'll get when you need a simple install, and phoning home is preinstalled too.
There are still some distros that are usable... notably gentoo or arch... but the "pretty" ones, especially the debian/ubuntu based ones, have really gone downhill.
This message is 20 years old. Many of us long for the utopia of a Linux desktop that just works, where drivers are up to date and X windows doesn't die due to a yum/apt-get update.
This feels like a future parody thread where someone will make fun of our comments.
That’s simply untrue. I have a phone, a tablet, and a laptop. I do different things on each. None has supplanted the others; they all supplement each other.
You do that, but it doesn't generalise. Mobile phone ownership exceeded laptop/desktop ownership in the us in the last 2 years and the latter is in a slow constant decline. A lot of people are going to be happy with just the phone in the future.
We went from computers being very rare (early on I remember maybe two families out of the whole class had one at home) to heading to above one per person (everyone had a laptop and there would be a desktop, too, or more) during college and now we're headed back towards "about one desktop/laptop per house or a bit more" as most people have phones.
Literally the top results for US smartphone ownership. You can do it.
> that those that make do with only phones would even want to purchase a tablet or laptop?
That's the whole point - they don't need / want one. But given the services that everyone needs are moving online, everyone needs some level of internet access. This effectively moves windows users to Linux/Android as discussed upthread.
I see. So you're not actually going to even try and answer the question? No evidence? Just "I'm going to conflate desktops and phones to make my point?"
Accidentally Android spies on you to the extent Microsoft couldn't even dream of in their evilest of dreams. And there is no way to root/control it to prevent that spying. Unlike Windows.
> Accidentally Android spies on you to the extent Microsoft couldn't even dream of in their evilest of dreams. And there is no way to root/control it to prevent that spying. Unlike Windows.
I know a lot of people who use Tablets as their main driver and don't have a PC (or only use it for edge cases). Not even for ideological reasons, it just works for them. It's not universal, but it's not rare, either.
This had been the opposite of my experience though. Maybe I got lucky with hardware, but I've never had issues with out-of-date drivers (outside of CUDA dependencies for research work) or having X or Gnome or whatnot break during an update.
But, I need to use Windows at my employer, and it's horrible. I wish Windows were at a point where it was ready for development.
Right now, the best dev setup is "install Linux in a VM" or "install this collection of incomplete ports/emulation/virtualization of Linux tools".
With Proton for gaming and Electron for desktop especially, Linux on the desktop is way different than it was 10 years ago, let alone 20.
Just out of curiosity (as the website suggests lol), which distro were you using? I long left Nvidia as it's really a no-go on Linux but I noticed different distros had VASTLY different experiences with it.
For instance Mint was very stable and simple to install drivers, but they were ofter outdated. Fedora was more work through rpm fusion but I also got a better experience and even managed to use Wayland. Some distros didn't even work with my setup.
In my opinion the biggest advantage and problem of Linux is the fragmentation. Linux is a word that encompasses too many variations of many systems on top of different versions with different build options of a kernel. This is why I always choose to talk about a distribution instead of Linux itself, since the kernel is just a part of the system (insert GNU/Linux copypasta here).
edit by ChatGPT, which apparently does not know about the copypasta): "Linux is actually GNU/Linux, or as I like to call it, the dynamic duo of the operating system world. The Linux kernel is like Batman, all tough and powerful, while the GNU tools and libraries are like Robin, always there to support and help out. Together, they make a unstoppable team that can take on any challenge.
But, let's be real here, without the GNU tools and libraries, the Linux kernel would just be a confused and frustrated little kernel, wondering why it can't do anything useful. So, it's important to give credit where it's due and call the whole operating system GNU/Linux.
Now, I know some of you might be thinking, "But wait, isn't Linux just for nerdy hackers and command line wizards?" Well, to those people I say, "Hold my beer, I'll show you how wrong you are." Because, these days, there are plenty of user-friendly Linux distributions that are perfect for everyday users. And, even better, most of them are free and open-source, so you can customize and tweak them to your heart's content.
But, let's not forget about the elephant in the room: NVIDIA. Yes, I'm talking about that greedy, selfish, proprietary-loving company that just can't seem to get its act together when it comes to Linux support. I mean, come on guys, we're not asking for much, just some stable drivers that don't crash all the time and support the latest features. Is that too much to ask? Apparently it is, because NVIDIA just keeps letting Linux users down.
So, in conclusion, if you want to join the awesome world of GNU/Linux, go for it! You won't regret it. And if you're already using GNU/Linux, give yourself a pat on the back and keep spreading the word. And, if you're using NVIDIA on Linux, well, good luck to you my friend, you're going to need it."
Ubuntu 22.04 with proprietary NVIDIA driver. I made no changes to the driver nor tinkered with any settings. I did not run any weird/nerdy applications that might have affected the GPU at all.
The only thing I did was running `apt update` and `apt upgrade` every day. One day, it just stopped booting into my desktop environment. Instead, it showed a blinking cursor. I followed some random tutorials online and uninstalled the driver, which fixed the issue.
> having X or Gnome or whatnot break during an update.
This happened exactly once (nvidia driver update killed x as it tried to reload the kernel driver).
Still better than system update deleting all your documents, right? (yes, I know that it happened only once too, but since the nvidia problem is a fair game, deleting user documents is the same).
It's basically part of every update, first thing I have to do is reinstall the Nvidia driver via ssh every single time.
And maybe every month or so, when I reboot it comes up in some ridiculous resolution, like 640x480 or something. This is also fixed by reinstalling the Nvidia driver.
When I get a new desktop (main PC is Windows), I switch my linux server to my old hardware. I just bought an AMD GPU for my desktop so in a couple of years when I upgrade my desktop, I'll be rid of Nvidia bullshit once and for all.
I just went through this pain, and fortunately my gpu just died during the process so I jumped to amd. It's like a breath of fresh air, my computer just works now.
Except now there's a bug and I can't use the integrated Intel graphics at the same time. Great. Works fine otherwise though, and I don't have to fuck around with my drivers ever again
Haha, yeah, that's actually what is going on here! But I'm still trying to see if I can get a Linux machine here.
Side note to any Linux devs considering MacOS: Be expected to also request at least ~$200 of software for OS features we might otherwise take for granted. (Window management, per-app volume management, etc.) Other niche features might be totally unavailable (eg. moving windows between desktops with keyboard shortcuts, or speeding up input-blocking animations) because there's no API provided to make it possible.
Microsoft has not a lot of interest in home power users. They need windows for business customers. And the majority of home users just keep the default system their PC came with. So if a few home users switch to Linux they probably won’t care at all.
Chrome as an example? They had an advert on top of the most successful search engine. Hardly a grassroots effort.
People won't bother with Linux, nor other alternative systems. Many don't even change the desktop wallpaper. The computer works out of the box, as it comes, and that's the end of the customization story. In order to achieve Linux majority, it needs to become the de facto standard: governments need to use it, schools need to teach it, and businesses need to use it. And it needs to come on computers preinstalled, compatible with all these other systems. Otherwise, no dice. The question is not technological - Linux has been fine for a long time now. It has been down to business, and Microsoft is good at business. That's it.
This kind of crap is what made Windows 10 unusable for me. Everything was infuriating.
I’m not a fanboy of anything either. Win2K was great. macOS 10.1-10.4 was wonderful. BeOS, RISCOS, IRIX, NeXT, and even DRDOS have warm places in my heart.
These days, I use macOS because I find it the least annoying. It still has too many approval dialogs and notifications, but it isn’t quite as hostile as Windows. Linux and BSD are “fine” but there are other issues that I have with those ecosystems as far as usability is concerned.
I really hope SerenityOS continues its fast paced development and becomes usable for daily computing…
I have a MacBook I use occasionally for work. I don't have an AppleID and don't want to make one (same as Microsoft Account). Every time I boot the system, there are about 20 untagged login prompts and have to manually cancel.
That’s interesting. I have a MacBook for work with no Apple ID and I don’t think I’ve ever been asked to sign into anything. I wonder if there are fleet management controls my company is using to disable a lot of that stuff.
Just to provide one example, I definitely have seen macOS pop up notifications advertising that Safari is better than everything else, and I should switch back to Safari.
> Just to provide one example, I definitely have seen macOS pop up notifications advertising that Safari is better than everything else, and I should switch back to Safari.
I would love to see a screenshot because this I simply don’t believe
I saw it within the past year. I didn’t save a screenshot anywhere I can find. I believe I applied defaults overrides (like in the link) to prevent it from coming back, much like Windows GPO policies.
It's well documented, I saw it at least once a month when logged out of iCloud. Certainly not the most annoying pop-up though, that award goes to the automatic Apple Music launcher when you put on headphones.
This is an old thing they've been doing almost a decade now [0]. It's still around now [1]. You probably never because you either use Safari as your web browser or use it enough for the pop up to not trigger. I don't really get why you think this is unbelievable when Apple will regularly try to get you to use Apple Music, iCloud, etc. Why not Safari?
I got my first Mac a few months ago and there are definitely a few annoying things. Not necessarily (only) popups, just weird error messages, bugs and the system sometimes telling me a jpeg file might be a virus that I may not want to "launch". Though on average I'd say it's a drastically better experience than the current state of Windows.
I’ve been using Mac for 12 years and never seen that dialog about a jpeg being a virus. Are you sure there _isn’t_ anything malicious embedded within the file?
Considering it happens with all files I download onto a USB drive, yes, I'm pretty sure it's not a virus.
It seems Mac OS makes all files downloaded like that executable and then assumes it's all viruses.
What are you doing with your machine that makes Windows 10 unusable? I've been on Windows 10 for years. I ran O&O ShutUp 10 a long time ago and haven't had any of the problems people are complaining about. I've had people complain about how they "shouldn't need to run Shutup 10" yeah ok valid point, but it's a weak one because I can make that point about anything on any other OS. It takes what - 10 seconds to run the application?
I'm an advanced power user. There are no pop-ups, no nagging to use Edge, no search feature hostility, no crashes, nothing. Not one day has gone by where I think "wow this OS sucks, why haven't they addressed this issue". I play PC games on it, browse, code, image editing, etc. all without a single hiccup. It's been completely stable and user-friendly. I'm genuinely curious what is it specifically that bothers people about this OS because it sounds like complaining for the sake of complaining and not anything authentic at this point.
I'm a software developer at a FAANG and I use a Windows machine. I listen to my Mac user colleagues complain every week: "my application crashed", "I need to reboot", "I'm forced to update see you in an hour", "I have to shut down so I can reset permissions for this app", etc. They roll their eyes when they notice I'm running Windows, but then endlessly complain about their mac systems. The cognitive dissonance is staggering.
This is my experience with Win 10 as well. In fact I dare say, Win 10 in the past 5 years is one of the best desktop OS's of all time. No crashes, perfect customizability to turn off things, fast and responsive.
However that said, I'm extremely worried about Win 11, and when I saw all the things they changed in the taskbar (no text labels, no option to never combine icons), the right click menu and so on, I was very disappointed. I did get the send to menu back with a thing and I know you can use winaerotweaker to get all the old stuff back, but a part of me wants to be on the native OS stuff whenever possible and not change core OS with third party apps. But I'm also worried about what they might further do in the future and in 5-10 years, incompatibility in programs/etc with Win 10 might make using it very bothersome so you have to update at some point.
You are exaggerating in an attempt to prove your point. Permissions _may_ require restarting the app once. Not weekly. MacOS major updates happen yearly, and minor every few months. Patches often don’t require restart. So that isn’t happening weekly either. Finally, “my application crashed” has absolutely nothing to do with MacOS and everything to do with the application. Nothing ever crashes for me except for Photoshop.
If you’re working for a FAANG you’re probably using a company device, which uses Windows Enterprise. Generally less ad-like, managed by GPO’s, etc. whereas home edition is going to have all these annoyances.
That said they can be tamed or disabled. My wife has a Windows 10 computer (home edition) and it doesn’t prompt her for anything - searches for files are all local, etc. Most of these annoyances are fixed by reading the options when you install the OS. The few that remain are a quick google search away.
This is in the email that microsoftadvertising.com is sending unsolicited to the support email account of one of my sites:
“Microsoft Advertising
88 MILLION new desktop searchers joined last year
Search is at the center of online shopping
88-90% of online shoppers used search. Meanwhile, only 39% used social in their shopping journeys.
Two.
Most searchers are open to switching brands
In fact, 3 out of 4 searchers we studied visited multiple brands' websites while they shopped.
Entice them to buy from your business with Dynamic Search Ads.
Three.
Online shopping journeys vary greatly
On average, 45% of purchase journeys lasted 30+ days. But some, like grocery shopping, lasted only 2 days.
Target ready-to-buy shoppers with In-market audiences.“
If it's a scam, it's a damn clever one, because a whois query reveals a domain registered to Microsoft, with azure-dns name servers and a Microsoft contact email.
Also one that's, erm, been flying under the radar for a long time because I've been getting these things for years. Not sure about parent but this is pretty well-known by people who've had to deal with it.
Been looking for ten minutes now and I can't find how to differentiate between Azure customers and Microsoft official websites. Observations:
- the advertising domain is not bought by markmonitor whereas microsoft.com, office.com, and outlook.com all are. Maybe this advertising domain isn't an important enough brand or maybe some other reason. The DNS servers for all four domains are NS1-{0..99}.azure-dns.com, NS2-{0..99}.azure-dns.net, and two other TLDs for NS3 and NS4, and always in the same order
- IP space is all AS8068 and AS8075 (checking the same four domains)
- I tried duckduckgo for "how to differentiate between azure customers and microsoft ip space" but didn't find anyone asking that question anywhere. Probably bad phrasing on my part
- I tried looking for websites hosted by Azure to see if there is an IP space for customers by searching ddg for "powered by azure" and "hosted with azure" but I only get results from Microsoft themselves, random garbage, and things like "azure lessons" that aren't hosted with azure at all (heh)
I would also have expected this to be not-Microsoft-owned and a scam, but I'm failing to prove that hypothesis. That would mean Microsoft is not the company that I thought it was: I thought the difference between Facebook,Google and Microsoft,Apple is that some are in the business of manipulating people and others sell honest products (even if I have other issues with locked-down Apple devices, at least it's not adtech). Looking for revenue streams, I found <https://www.kamilfranek.com/assets/images/microsoft_revenue_...>. So not quite adtech but ads was the biggest growing product last year and has been growing for at least a decade (also based on other sources). Interesting.
It does sound like a scam, but if you've ever tried to use a Microsoft account (I have to sometimes for work) you'll eventually land on a pile of domains that look like scams, and bizarrely want you to type in your password in a UI from the 90s among other things.
(as an aside, I like UIs from the 90s but it's jarring when you fall out of the regular glossy experience into like totallylegitimatemicrosoftazure.com or whatever)
Is there a version of Windows that lets you pay your way out of this bullshit? I may need a Windows machine for work next year and this shit is terrifying. I haven't touched Windows since around 2006 so I'm not familiar with their offerings. They used to have a consumer and a professional edition of Windows in the olden days with the latter being far less annoying.
No, they still have these features on Pro and even HPC SKUs of Client. Server and LTSB don't, but are missing other features you might actually want (like DirectX).
If it is a Windows machine provided from a workplace with IT then it should be a Windows Enterprise image where this stuff is disabled with Group policy or Intune.
Don't bother with cleaning script, they can fuck things up, and the benefit is questionable, as it's a whack-a-mole basically. Windows 11 is not a hard requirement, and I don't think it will be in the coming few years, so I went with Windows 10 LTSC. Lots of useless crap is cut from it, so no Cortana, no Store, no Edge even, and no feature updates. There are security updates however! So it's a nice, stable, useful edition, with no downsides for gaming.
I don't think businesses care too much. LTSC is for when you need the system to not change over time, but still get some security updates, not simply business use - for that, there's the Enterprise edition of course.
Annoyingly LTSC costs around $300ish for the typical end user and has an inordinate amount of hoops just to buy it... makes it difficult to recommend to family so I curse them with Arch instead.
I personally run my own activation server (https://github.com/Wind4/vlmcsd), and just point the Windows installation there. Or you can use one of the many servers that are floating around the internet. Either way, it's a bit annoying unfortunately.
Also, my country's second hand electronics market has LTSC keys for sale for like $25. That might be worth looking into.
I've seen that stuff floating around and it brings me back to my warez days. I've put that behind me though and I just want an honest relationship now and I'm consistently finding that in the open source community, it's like a breath of fresh air.
>I just want an honest relationship now and I'm consistently finding that in the open source community, it's like a breath of fresh air.
I share these feelings deeply. Furthermore, what Microsoft (and other large tech companies) put people through via their systems, feels like an abusive relationship to me. FOSS, for the most part, aligns much closer to my idea of computation. A kernel of deep contempt remained in me however, from my old days of using, and hacking, my Windows system which just never worked long in the way I wanted it to. And I remember reading news on Microsoft proposals such as "Trusted Computing", where the idea was that Windows would scan your files when they are being opened, to determine if it's a legitimate copy and refuse to work with it if it's not approved[0]. That was such an outrageous idea to me back in mid 2000s that it cemented in me that I won't give Microsoft any money. Which of course softened, over the years, I bought second hand Windows licenses for computers I set up for others, for example, but still... the one installation I have to keep around for gaming, will never be a legitimate copy as long as I can manage.
For added fun, the KMS emulator I'm using is open source, and runs on Linux :)
Exactly, businesses need this thing to get out of the way and just remain consistent. Turns out there's a lot of people that want exactly the same thing and we are not getting it any more.
Windows 10 'LTSC' sounds like what you want, I used it for some client projects.
The LTS release was meant for Kiosk and pseudo embedded applications but was pretty much a non hostil UX version of Windows 10. In comparison even Windows 10 Professional editions are very bloated.
I am not sure if they intend to have an analogue Windows 11 LTS but I suppose the need will probably be there for customers who are more Windows-centric.
If you can't understand the difference between solidarity and tribalism, that's something you should work on.
If you can't understand the political, philosophical and sociological nuances of selecting between Windows and Linux as computing environments, and why this is more than just a simple UI preference, that's something you should work on.
I'm not the person you responded to, and I would never have replied with sarcasm as they did, but "Stoked to see another soul has seen through the smokescreen" comes across as more tribal than solidarity, IMO, if those are the only two options.
Did you read the article? It's about how Microsoft is gaslighting the user about the future of computing. There is absolutely a smokescreen in place, which the majority of Linux-based distributions do not employ.
For me, Manjaro, and later (purely out of masochism) Arch. :)
I did "look back" for certain AAA games that either don't work on Linux or DO work but their launcher doesn't (e.g., Blizzard), but AAA game companies have done me the solid of hypercommercializing themselves into unbearable mediocrity. So, even if I want to play one of those games now, I'm not too hurried to wait for a few years so Proton support makes it available (plus you get it cheaper, with bugfixes, all DLCs, and your hardware can run it better).
just as a heads up, the blizzard launcher works fine. there was a short period it didn't due to some bug, that they fixed on their end for the Linux community.
I play wow, ow2 and such just fine from the launcher. so give it a try again if you've been avoiding it.
Gnome has really surprised me (in a good way). I was really just looking to have a better dev experience since I use containers so extensively. But the UI is really pleasant to look at and intuitive. I particularly enjoy not having to disable ads and other nuisances that Microsoft keeps throwing onto the pile.
Yes you can however every so often I see the let’s finish setup screen will appear to prompt you, again you can continue without an account and then be nagged again.
For context I used and loved Windows since I was a teenager with Windows 3.1 but for me I just find an OS with such features to jarring for daily use. Also note Mac OS has its problems too. I was so excited for W11 and generally love most of it.
I can't believe that right click Menu has has "more" option which shows basic features of that context menu, like what the fuck? what's even the reasoning with this
This. A services company is inherently downmarket. Easy positioning for MS, but Apple's eyeing becoming a services company too, which fights against their high end hardware business' demands.
What really kills me about the ad-spam being added to menus everywhere is that eventually they start having problems and drag my computer to its knees. I end up with behaviors where the Start Menu takes several seconds to appear, or a search will stall, and when navigating folders in the File Explorer have very serious and noticeable drag, taking one or two seconds. So far I’ve eventually been able to figure out how to turn them off with registry edits and fix the delays, but it seems to be getting harder to do, and MS is definitely omitting controls from the control panel.
It very well may be superficially my fault these things happen, due to customizations or features I’ve enabled or disabled, or software I’ve installed, or due to my company web policies and firewalls, but I have no way to track down the causes. The true culprit though, IMO, is the blurring of the line between application software and operating system. Allowing all these hooks into basic OS functionality seems like a bad idea. It’s crazy that opening the menu to log out or shut down will first go out to the web to scrape some news headlines or shopping suggestions for me, crazy I say!
I know I don’t need it, but I want to keep using it. And, I lament that the company I already paid money to for an OS license can’t help itself by putting in so many intrusive advertisements and dark patterns on what is supposed to be just an operating system.
a lot of windows people i know, dont bother with a proper shut down anymore, they let it run 24-7, or they just hit the power switch and nuke it all instead of waiting.
And as soon as you're on a subscription-based Windows that has forced auto updates, suddenly you can't just stick to a given version of windows and they can shove whatever they want at you, just like a web service.
Firefox (mobile) was pushing ads at me on [what is supposed to be] my home screen last week (Addidas and Nike being put in the first two slots).
Why would Microsoft not advertise in their browser when supposed competition is doing the same. Like, switch to Google and get their tracking, switch to Firefox and get their ads, ... "might as well stay with Edge" becomes a more realistic proposition every day.
[I'd personally probably move to links before using Edge, but that's just me.]
Between the adds infiltrating every part of the os and the arbitrary decision to not allow my computer to run windows 11 (no TPM, though it is plenty fast) I have had enough. I've daily driving Linux for 7-8 years with only occasional windows use. There are certainly some rough edges with Linux, but it is perfectly workable.
TPM2.0 is required because it allows for running of encrypted binaries and microsoft will need that feature to ensure people can't modify away any user hostile features.
It's truly amazing how Microsoft insists on making Windows worse with each release. It makes me miss the old odd/even releases where at least half of them weren't bad.
Technically Windows 11 is an even release, since Windows 9 was skipped. I, for one, am looking forward to the revolutionary Taskbar with Titles in Windows 12!
I suspect the managers and execs also don’t, or only sanitized Windows Enterprise setups, or else they wouldn’t let the designers have free reign here.
I think somewhere around 2K/XP was the pinnacle, Vista was too much graphical bling and bloaty, while 7 toned it back a bit, but 8 is when the decline really started being noticeable.
I take your point but I had way too much trouble with x64 driver support in 2000/XP. For me win7 was the one that got proper 64 bit driver support and "just worked" fine with a bunch of memory.
Most average users complain just as much, and are just as unhappy with it. Only reason they stay is learned helplessness and lack of realistic alternatives.
One thing to consider is resale value. When I tried reselling old Windows laptops like a Surface or XPS, the value dropped off a cliff from the MSRP. I would spend $2000 on a laptop and then it was selling for $700 used on ebay a year later.
With MacBooks (and other Apple products) you can often recoup 70%-80% of your initial cost as long as it's in good condition.
If it's not a base-model. If you're one of the unlucky shmucks running an 8/256 M1 Macbook Pro, you'll be lucky to get $500 for it on the secondhand market.
Swappa shows that you can get much more. The current average sale price for a Macbook Air, M1, 256GB is $673 respectively. Compared to the $1000 MSRP you're getting about 67% back.
Note that Swappa takes a 3% cut, so the buyer would actually see around ~$650.
It gets even better. I got my M1 Airs (base model) for like $850 arg (two at $950, 2 at $750 - all brand new).
They're still great little machines - like my still-running 2010 Air (so retro I keep it around for kicks) - I expect these to last pretty much forever.
Great for the kids/elderly when configured properly. Minimal support effort. My kids treat them like their Nintendos and they just work.
I don't tend to upgrade machines all that often. My current laptop is two years old that I maxed out with 128GB RAM and oodles of storage so I won't need to consider upgrading for at least 5 more years at least.
The Macs are somewhat overpriced (especially the upsells for more RAM and storage), but I'd still consider one once you can get rid of the horrible operating system that comes with it and Asahi Linux works fully (external monitor/Thunderbolt dock support is what I'm most interested in).
Sorry for an emotional expletive-laden post here, but this enrages me so much. My computer is my main professional and creative tool, and for MS to do this shit without my permission or control (like it already does with fucking Edge and OneDrive nags every time it installs an update) feels so exploitative, greedy, and evil.
And stupid - their execs are chasing myopic short term gains with aggressive stongarm tactics, while long-term I and probably a million others are running for the exit, and doing our best to never use Windows, Azure, Outlook, Office etc again.
So few companies out there seen to care about their long term reputation.
> while long-term I and probably a million others are running for the exit, and doing our best to never use Windows, Azure, Outlook, Office etc again. So few companies out there seen to care about their long term reputation.
Sadly, the number of people who will actually run for the exit is much, much smaller. People on HN are completely unrepresentative of the general population. I'm pretty sure MS has people who do user retention as part of design research, it is standard in the industry before rolling out a feature to all users. Especially when switching costs are high, even people who hate ads get used to them after a very short time. Plus, everyone who can afford a Mac and doesn't mind being locked-in to the Apple ecosystem is already there.
Every mainstream platform is already inundated with ads. Social media is full of ads and sponsored posts. Most 'news' sites have gotten so bad that content is only 25-50% of the screen. E-commerce marketplaces from Amazon to Walmart are compromised and corrupted. People may run from one ad-saturated platform or site to another, but the norm is ads everywhere. If they're not running from that, would they notice or care about this?
Well we're often the ones who recommend a computer to our parents and grandparents. Or the ones who decide which cloud hosting platform or email service provider to use in our organizations.
People and governments are collectively getting fed up with surveillance capitalism.
Well, I remember how 10 years ago tons of HN users were posting about how they changed the browser on all of their relatives and friends computer to Chrome. How did that end up?
It took me a while to abandon the Microsoft ecosystem for my own use but I'm so glad that I did. It was a lot of careful considerations though and finding out what was important to me and how other open source projects aligned with those goals.
I'm thinking maybe a site that has a way for users to pick things that matter to them and then recommend an OS and software would be a good idea.
> Sadly, the number of people who will actually run for the exit is much, much smaller.
Doesn't matter as long as the number is growing. As it grows, more people will tell others that they switched and it's better. It's slow to start but eventually it becomes unstoppable. I think Microsoft will keep the business desktop but they will lose the home desktop. When that happens, Eventually, games won't even be made for Windows anymore, like Macs today.
Microsoft transitioning Windows into a spyware platform filled with advertisements and garbage has been in the making for years at this point. Its absolutely exploitative, greedy, and evil, which is why if you can you should consider switching to a different operating system, like Linux. At the very least you can transition to using Linux for tasks that work on Linux while keeping around Windows for tasks which require windows, either due to a lack of Linux support or poor performance/stability/etc. All of this assuming you aren't doing this already.
i used to do all sorts of stuff with Windows XP/2000 (like sysprepping reg-tweaked/debloated/pre-loaded Windows ISOs for myself). but now i have fully moved away from Windows to EndeavourOS/KDE and haven't looked back; many others have jumped ship to PoP_OS. yes, you do have to slightly limit/research your hardware options to get a great experience, but i've always been an AMD GPU guy (due to their better thermals / power efficiency), and all of my laptops are Thinkpads w/Intel wifi, so take this with those grains of salt.
i do miss Foobar2000 and HeidiSQL (DeaDBeeF and DBeaver aren't quite as polished), and Affinity products are hard to get running without glitches in Wine/Proton, but otherwise it's been fantastic. though i've had to fiddle quite a bit with Chromium and MPV settings to enable GPU hardware acceleration for video decoding.
first straw was slow filesystem access due to Windows Defender, last straw was unstoppable Windows updates full of ad garbage and apps i previously removed with various debloating scripts. i ran Windows 10 with these addons to get back a more Windows XP experience:
Linux is a usability mess, and has been for 20 years. I give a new shot once every other year.
Basic flow:
- Works out of the box for a basic desktop
- Once you start installing drivers and software outside the package manager (Which you'll need to do immediately) and doing C+P CLI workarounds, the system state starts decaying, and things break.
- The easiest way to fix things is usually a clean OS reinstall, in the sense of a car "total".
My computer ran well with Linux with one display after instaing Linux. Then I tried to use a second, daisy chained, Displayport display. And the mess began. Confusing tips on forums, confusing and experimental drivers to install... And so on. Didn't manage to get it running.
The thing with Linux is it gets blamed for lack of vendor support. If something doesn't work with Linux it's Linux's fault, if something doesn't work with windows it's the vendors fault. That's never seemed fair to me. Those confusing and experimental drivers you mention are unlikely to be provided by the vendor and are likely a volunteer's best efforts to reverse engineer the driver
As a counter point my old wireless canon printer works flawlessly out of its old box with Linux but getting it to work on windows 10 is full of confusing tips on forums, confusing and experimental drivers to install. Nightmare.
In this case (it's was couple of years ago) it was a beta release by the manufacturer.
Thing is, to me as an end user it doesn't matter who's at fault, if it doesn't work it doesn't work and I'm only so motivated to investigate something (functionality wise) basic not working while on Windows all the basics run fine but the advanced stuff creates problems. With Linux on desktop I never arrived at the advanced stuff giving up at (some of) the basic stuff not working out of the box.
But I fully understand, from a technical standpoint drivers and daisy chained display probably aren't basic and Windows has hidden als the complexity from me for the last 20 years.
Both AMD and Intel have open source drivers upstreamed into the Linux kernel (and are the vendor recommended ones, outside of certain enterprise use cases).
Rings true for me, I'm about at the reinstall stage with my HTPC. It will no longer send audio via HDMI due to some deep obscure pipewire config that broke itself without me touching anything. It also no longer connects to my Bluetooth keyboard on 2/3 of the keyboard's channels (actually it connects and disconnects very rapidly, several times a second, but is unusable regardless).
Usability of Linux desktop environments isn't perfect but at least the trend is steady improvement. The days of having to do weird stuff just to make some everyday USB device work when you plug it in are mostly gone. The software available for Linux in a few areas is now genuinely best in class. It's not always the same exact applications you might be used to but then that's true of moving between Windows and macOS as well.
My own experience of modern Linux is very different to yours. I don't think I've had to completely clean and reinstall any Linux system I use - desktop or server - for over a decade. Some of those systems have been through multiple full OS upgrades in that time but those were done in place and usually without losing anything (or gaining anything unwanted).
It's obviously not perfect. Some of the recent Wayland changes got released by some distros before some of the applications that do video calls were fully ready for them and that caused problems with remote working for example. But it's paradise compared to the danger of installing any modern version of Windows or any Apple OS and getting serious regressions or overtly user-hostile new "features" that you can't turn off.
I do think there's room for a modern desktop OS that doesn't have all the historical baggage of Linux. Not having a permissions model that sandboxes apps and the data they work with by default seems very outdated in 2022 for example. The traditional filesystem hierarchy is unnecessarily complicated and not well suited to modern systems. We rely on container technologies for professional work now because the package management and installation/update mechanics are so fragile (though no worse than Windows or macOS IMHO). I just wish the barriers to entry weren't so high now that it is tough for anyone to build a new desktop OS from the ground up any more.
A lot of your "problems" are because you've spent years buying "Windows" devices indiscriminately. If you had been buying things that were known to be compatible with Linux, you'd have no problems getting them to work.
You didn't state which distro or package manager you were dealing with but there is a LOT more third-party support for DEB packages than the others, so that may also be why you had problems.
It's unclear that Microsoft providing up-to-date guidance on the continued leverage of various professional features included with your Windows license qualifies as "nagging". I would double-check if you actually have experienced this.
I know I probably sound like a broken record, but Linux really is quite nice these days. I personally find it miles better than Windows. It is even decent for gaming, thanks to Steam’s work on proton.
So, depending on your use case, you might be able to make the switch without any significant drawbacks.
FWIW, I say this as a former Microsoft employee and heavy promoter of their ecosystem for the first 15 years of my career.
Make a deal with a demon and it will come around to bite you in the ass every single time. They've written instructional parables about this stuff for thousands of years.
I don't particularly mind this. Apple already forces Safari down our throats at every turn. And Edge is honestly a pretty great browser. Unless you're a Mozilla purist, there's really no better choice on Windows at this point.
You should be pissed off that your OS doesn't give you the freedom to choose which browser you use as a default. While you may think Edge is good, I use a different browser and my OS shouldn't be allowed to override the preference.
Edge is the only browser I’ve ever used that tries to sell me some sort of credit card deal or reward points or some shit. Got a popup just yesterday when testing a browser extension of mine on Edge.
What about using a custom shell on Windows 11? I remember using LiteStep, bbLean and geoShell on my old Windows 98 and XP. If they are no longer developed, this might be a niche market for Windows 11 users who are tired of constant "improvements". I bet some users would be very happy with "classic" Windows 7 shell too.
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[ 3.7 ms ] story [ 420 ms ] threadI've put it to show Weather only and I actually like it a lot.
The reality is the computer form factor involving a keyboard is slowly becoming more and more of a niche. Windows has a lock on this niche for business and gaming. For other home use there is strong competition from apple and for education there is strong competition from chromebook.
Linux is still not really in the running, sorry.
Turns out Native > Webshit for many things.
Every time in my life I have installed Linux with such high hopes and get annoyed by all the crap that doesn't work.
Here is the laptop you wanted me to try to install Linux on lol. Who has time for this shit? I just want to use the computer not futz around with it constantly.
https://www.reddit.com/r/chromeos/comments/eku5tv/replacing_...
Like I said, spend $99 on MacBook Air, receive it, turn it on, it works. That’s all I care about. I don’t even like apple products really but I just want something I know will work.
If you went and bought a used laptop that has official Linux support, like an XPS 13, then you could also open it, turn it on, and have it work with zero issues with Linux—the same way as a MacBook Air. Try Hackintoshing a random laptop from Best Buy and I think you will encounter similar issues with macOS.
By the way, the Chromebook you mentioned runs Linux. Google might eventually port this to Fuchsia but this remains to be seen.
Unless Linux is braindead easy to use without frustrations, it won't happen. Gamers pay more for lesser ease of access increases.
Switching to Linux brings with it a whole new swath of problems and fixes Windows problems so not only are users seeing new issues, their workarounds now have to be worked around because whatever was wrong in Windows works in Linux. Add to that the fact that most Linux users are power users and instructions therefore lean towards that, and you’ve got a problem that also seems insurmountable to solve.
It’s the classic boiling frog dilemma. Windows has just had decades of heating water to get to where we are.
This is reinforced by most major apps which eventually become cross-platform starting out treating Linux as a 3rd class citizen. For games, Discord and Parsec come to mind, where the former took years, and the latter still doesn't allow hosting from Linux. Nothing about this reinforces the idea of Linux being easier to use. It's the opposite: it reinforces the mentality that Linux is still two decades behind, regardless what the reality may be.
How many complaints form when YouTube pushes a minor UI or UX change? Now multiply that by a few magnitudes of order. That is the problem we're dealing with, and no amount of chastising or belittling Windows users will change that (in fact, it does the opposite). Did people forget how Apple managed to get a foothold in the market despite their ludicrous prices and dev-unfriendly practices?
The only people who use Linux are the tech oriented crowd, including gamers, who naturally tend to be more tech oriented than most. This is still a very small fraction of the world though. And this isn't changing unless a healthy fraction of devices and PCs come with Linux preinstalled. Even then a lot of people will complain and ask for Windows (or whatever) the very next day after purchasing their device.
Not in my observation. They get something pre-installed, they click on things they know. I am always amazed by the fact that most don' t have the smallest mental image of how it works.
The FPS in the top 100 currently most popular games on Steam[0] and their status [1]:
Native or working: 9/13Broken: 4/13
Non-steam or outside top-100:
[0] https://store.steampowered.com/charts/mostplayed[1] https://www.protondb.com/
Battlefield 2042 is on Steam but not supported, though I'm not sure if that's the anti-cheat solution or Proton.
https://areweanticheatyet.com
Linux has completed 90% of the work, but the last 10% (usability) is a long way away.
Yeah, that's the thing. It often feels GUIs on linux are meshed together from at least 7 different styles and paradigms and too often they are indeed made like this.
So in Ubuntu for example I sometimes had to click left to close a window and sometimes right.
What laypersons want, is one single way to do things, that works. But you just won't get far, without the terminal. That is, things do run pretty much out of the box if you are lucky - until they don't. And then good luck trying to fix it without the terminal. I can parse and usually fix cryptic error messages and logs, but my father (who is a trained engineer, but no english speaker nor programmer) cannot. Unless of course there is a driver issue. I seldom can fix them and I encountered too many over the years.
In either case, I am lucky that linux exists and I am now off to try out EndeavourOS ..
Flip through stuff on the control panel and you'll get the same mash of code heaved forward from the 90s. It's a bad look, and I've always been so confused why Microsoft doesn't do anything about it. Seems like a great pet project for some nth level middle manager to get sweet bonuses for.
Unfortunately these days even that keeps getting changed. Part of the reason I'm happier on FreeBSD.
In short, Proton is making pretty good progress and anyone can check their own Steam library with ProtonDB, to see how many of the titles they care about are likely to work.
Out of the popular mainstream games, around a half will work on Linux, whereas in the case of my Steam library (mostly indie titles) that figure is closer to 75%. This is no doubt thanks to shipping games now being simple in most of the popular game engines out there (like Unity, Unreal and even Godot). However, some games have the occasional bug, whereas others just straight up refuse to launch.
Also many users don't use things like AMD Software, but I personally didn't really find a good alternative for it on Linux, to limit my GPUs power usage and alter the fan curve, CoreCtrl coming close but not quite being a viable replacement: https://gitlab.com/corectrl/corectrl
Back to games, there will be issues with either really old niche titles that you might want to play, or many of the modern games that have multiplayer components (and anti-cheat systems), or sometimes even two games from the same publisher/developer might have one of them be available on Linux but not the other (e.g. War Thunder works but Enlisted doesn't).
In short, Linux is definitely getting better and might already be sufficient as a desktop daily driver even for the folks who want to do some gaming, but isn't a 1:1 replacement and some things just won't work for a variety of reasons. That said, claiming that "The Year of the Linux Desktop" might eventually come no longer feels delusional - it might just be 5-20 years until we get there for regular folks.
This probably wouldn't have happened without Valve's involvement, as well as all of the people who work on Wine and other software like that.
WSL is nothing new, the only thing it brings to the table is that we don't need to install VMWare or Virtual Box.
I don't dual boot since 2005.
with Microsoft's declining focus on compatibility, the time is coming where the majority of Windows games now run best on something that isn't Windows
(not to mention the lack of ads, spyware, general lack of stability and forced reboots)
and share the result of that freely with the world
Those 2% market shared are filled with games that are developed on Windows, targeting Windows.
Meaning those game studios will keep giving Microsoft money, and letting Valve do the needful to work on their platform.
this is a stopgap measure to bootstrap demand for the platform
because these days the target platform isn't Windows
it's the game development kits sold as a service, like Unity and Unreal Engine
both of which are now supported natively
> Meaning those game studios will keep giving Microsoft money
now you've lost me
(it's also bizarre that you pop up in every single "Windows bad" post right on cue to defend Microsoft's honour)
(edit: ah, found your linkedin, so you're an MS employee, I guess that explains it then)
Microsoft is a company, there is no such thing as honour for business, only money and profits.
Same applies to dumb quotes like "do no evil" and similar.
You're right, Windows isn't the main target platform for AAA game studios, Playstation, XBox, Switch, iOS and Android are the ones briging big bags of money home.
I disagree with this statement, especially in the case where there's somebody motivated enough to patch Wine to support specific applications.
At the end of the day, Windows applications expect a set of interfaces. As long as those interfaces exist and work as expected, the application will work.
I am just waiting for Microsoft to give up on Windows-on-Arm and instead create a Microsoft-branded Linux distribution that has an actual Windows subsystem for Linux (that is, a compatibility / emulation layer similar to Wine or Proton to run legacy Windows software).
Decades of backward compatibility makes Windows a resource hog. I do not think it can make the jump to Arm or RISC-V easily.
I worked for a fortune 500, and they used a custom Unix type OS with libreoffice. We ended up using mostly Google docs though.
And the business world will never switch to Linux.
No, there' won't be an explosion, it's a death by a thousand cuts. The bemused amongst us are wondering why Microsoft is the one holding the knife.
WSL2 is now so good, that you can get away with not needing Linux at all.
I use "a full linux desktop" at work (Ubuntu 22.04 LTS) and the desktop UI bugs and limitations are a nightmare. Give me Windows and WSL any day in comparison. At least there I know that basic stuff like clipboard and screen sharing/capture always works flawlessly, and windows don't magically get stuck to one aspect ratio and nost wasting my time trying to google fixes for snap/wayland/apt bugs.
Sure, some of these bugs I encountered could be Ubuntu, or Gnome, or Wayland, or pipewire issues, but as an employee, I don't have time to distro hop at work in search for the Linux experience with the least amount of jank or find out which component of this bazaar engineering efort is the one responsible for this jank.
Sure, I don't see ads in my Ubuntu install, but it's 2022 and the clipboard in Firefox in Ubuntu still stops working randomly, which causes me way more productivity loss than seeing a candy crush icon in the Win start menu. Firefox bug tracker says the clipboard issue fixed on their end whenever this bug gets reported and says it must be now a Wayland issue, while Wayland devs say this is a Firefox issue, meanwhile me and severa other Ubuntu users are complaining about our clipboards being broken in FF. FML, it's 2022 and I still can't have a working clipboard on Linux, one of the most used basic features on any OS. "Year of the Linux desktop." Yeah.
Not to mentions the lack of hibernate(not sleep) on Ubuntu. I spend almost an hour trying various tutorials and command line incantations that had the risk at bricking my OS, to get hibernate working, and no cigar, and I realized Ubuntu really, really wants you not to use hibernate at all cost. I never thought it would be missing a basic feature so simple as "dump entire RAM contents to SSD, then at power on, copy them back to RAM and resume". Sure, Linux boffins will tell me this is a limitation due to the use of Z-RAM compression or something, but me as an end user, I don't care which technical decision has lead to this limitation, as it doesn't fix my problem of not having hibernate.
LinuxMint is a vastly better experience today because it's focused on being the best for desktop users, while Ubuntu isn't any more.
Not people, Ubtunu is what my company's IT departament provides everyone in the backend team use on our managed ThinkPads. I could protest, nuke it and spend time switching to Mint or something else based on 22.04 LTS that IT could also manage, but then I'm the one on the hook for any issues that arise with that one, and let's face it, it's Linux we're talking, no distro is ever bug free, they all show some jank once the honeymoon period is over depending on your hardware and software use cases.
This is in now way a good user experience.
Windows still beats Ubuntu hands down for me in terms of having less annoying issues that kill my productivity.
I tried, on the new job. I've dealt with windows for 6 months, but 2 weeks ago I was sick of it. There is always something not working right. If a computer is a bicycle for the mind, Windows 10 has training wheels and a hysterical helicopter mom screaming 'you're gonna fall!' all the time. Death by a 1000 papercuts. I've reformatted it and run kubuntu now. I will miss excel, and online outlook is not as good as the real thing, but these are sacrifices I am willing to make just to get rid of the whiney drug addict called windows 10.
I'm not going to say Linux is perfect. Plenty of dumb cuts in there too. But at least it treats me with respect, at least the KDE world does.
Ymmv, of course. The job is great enough to let each run his or her preferred OS. As a recent escapee from a hyper standardized environment, I am loving it
[0] https://docs.mesa3d.org/drivers/d3d12.html
trillion dollar marketing seems to be more important factor than "nerds"
see Linux for example
There's ofc Android, but people have no choice - you are either "rich" (outside US) and want to buy iphone or go with android
Like many people I really want to make the jump but still hang on to Windows via O&O Shutup 10.
My wheel doesn't scroll a line at a time, and there are three acceleration modes for the pointer-default,adaptive and flat.
I keep hearing people complaining about Linux with the weirdest problems ever.
My latest attempt was back in Summer with Fedora 36 and a Logitech mouse. The default was one line at a time and I could not find a setting for it. (Apart from Firefox config but I need multiple browsers.)
Amusingly I even gave Chromebook (kind of a Linux) a proper try and with the scroll wheel it too scrolled a single line at a time.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B071J9JC6S
The Year of Desktop Linux is as virtual machine running on top of Apple and Microsoft desktop OS, or having the complete userspace replaced like on Google OS offerings.
Each new Ubuntu is a whole new beast on the desktop (and sometimes even on server).
This feels like a future parody thread where someone will make fun of our comments.
The rest is minor noise, sadly.
At least it is possible to have a working Linux desktop but that was true twenty years ago.
It’s a very monkey’s paw scenario.
Edit: also, conflating phones with "desktops" is just being glib and disingenous.
Literally the top results for US smartphone ownership. You can do it.
> that those that make do with only phones would even want to purchase a tablet or laptop?
That's the whole point - they don't need / want one. But given the services that everyone needs are moving online, everyone needs some level of internet access. This effectively moves windows users to Linux/Android as discussed upthread.
Can you explain what you mean here? How do AOSP ROMs subject themselves to Google's spying, much less the meticulously-designed privacy distributions?
https://www.grapheneos.org/
By that logic, my Linux machine is a Windows machine, because it has Wine/Proton.
But, I need to use Windows at my employer, and it's horrible. I wish Windows were at a point where it was ready for development.
Right now, the best dev setup is "install Linux in a VM" or "install this collection of incomplete ports/emulation/virtualization of Linux tools".
With Proton for gaming and Electron for desktop especially, Linux on the desktop is way different than it was 10 years ago, let alone 20.
In my opinion the biggest advantage and problem of Linux is the fragmentation. Linux is a word that encompasses too many variations of many systems on top of different versions with different build options of a kernel. This is why I always choose to talk about a distribution instead of Linux itself, since the kernel is just a part of the system (insert GNU/Linux copypasta here).
edit by ChatGPT, which apparently does not know about the copypasta): "Linux is actually GNU/Linux, or as I like to call it, the dynamic duo of the operating system world. The Linux kernel is like Batman, all tough and powerful, while the GNU tools and libraries are like Robin, always there to support and help out. Together, they make a unstoppable team that can take on any challenge.
But, let's be real here, without the GNU tools and libraries, the Linux kernel would just be a confused and frustrated little kernel, wondering why it can't do anything useful. So, it's important to give credit where it's due and call the whole operating system GNU/Linux.
Now, I know some of you might be thinking, "But wait, isn't Linux just for nerdy hackers and command line wizards?" Well, to those people I say, "Hold my beer, I'll show you how wrong you are." Because, these days, there are plenty of user-friendly Linux distributions that are perfect for everyday users. And, even better, most of them are free and open-source, so you can customize and tweak them to your heart's content.
But, let's not forget about the elephant in the room: NVIDIA. Yes, I'm talking about that greedy, selfish, proprietary-loving company that just can't seem to get its act together when it comes to Linux support. I mean, come on guys, we're not asking for much, just some stable drivers that don't crash all the time and support the latest features. Is that too much to ask? Apparently it is, because NVIDIA just keeps letting Linux users down.
So, in conclusion, if you want to join the awesome world of GNU/Linux, go for it! You won't regret it. And if you're already using GNU/Linux, give yourself a pat on the back and keep spreading the word. And, if you're using NVIDIA on Linux, well, good luck to you my friend, you're going to need it."
The only thing I did was running `apt update` and `apt upgrade` every day. One day, it just stopped booting into my desktop environment. Instead, it showed a blinking cursor. I followed some random tutorials online and uninstalled the driver, which fixed the issue.
This happened exactly once (nvidia driver update killed x as it tried to reload the kernel driver).
Still better than system update deleting all your documents, right? (yes, I know that it happened only once too, but since the nvidia problem is a fair game, deleting user documents is the same).
It's basically part of every update, first thing I have to do is reinstall the Nvidia driver via ssh every single time.
And maybe every month or so, when I reboot it comes up in some ridiculous resolution, like 640x480 or something. This is also fixed by reinstalling the Nvidia driver.
When I get a new desktop (main PC is Windows), I switch my linux server to my old hardware. I just bought an AMD GPU for my desktop so in a couple of years when I upgrade my desktop, I'll be rid of Nvidia bullshit once and for all.
Except now there's a bug and I can't use the integrated Intel graphics at the same time. Great. Works fine otherwise though, and I don't have to fuck around with my drivers ever again
Actually it's, "request a Macbook" or "work in a place where devs get Macs".
Side note to any Linux devs considering MacOS: Be expected to also request at least ~$200 of software for OS features we might otherwise take for granted. (Window management, per-app volume management, etc.) Other niche features might be totally unavailable (eg. moving windows between desktops with keyboard shortcuts, or speeding up input-blocking animations) because there's no API provided to make it possible.
People won't bother with Linux, nor other alternative systems. Many don't even change the desktop wallpaper. The computer works out of the box, as it comes, and that's the end of the customization story. In order to achieve Linux majority, it needs to become the de facto standard: governments need to use it, schools need to teach it, and businesses need to use it. And it needs to come on computers preinstalled, compatible with all these other systems. Otherwise, no dice. The question is not technological - Linux has been fine for a long time now. It has been down to business, and Microsoft is good at business. That's it.
(I guess the real reason is stuff like the TPM requirements and no 32 bit version meaning it drops support for some systems Windows 10 runs on?)
I’m not a fanboy of anything either. Win2K was great. macOS 10.1-10.4 was wonderful. BeOS, RISCOS, IRIX, NeXT, and even DRDOS have warm places in my heart.
These days, I use macOS because I find it the least annoying. It still has too many approval dialogs and notifications, but it isn’t quite as hostile as Windows. Linux and BSD are “fine” but there are other issues that I have with those ecosystems as far as usability is concerned.
I really hope SerenityOS continues its fast paced development and becomes usable for daily computing…
I’m genuinely intrigued by which approval dialogs and notifications you find so hostile in MacOS?
If it’s SIP or Gatekeeper you’re talking about, there are easily implemented workarounds.
Otherwise I really can’t think of any “notifications” from the OS
I would love to see a screenshot because this I simply don’t believe
I saw it within the past year. I didn’t save a screenshot anywhere I can find. I believe I applied defaults overrides (like in the link) to prevent it from coming back, much like Windows GPO policies.
[0] https://www.ctrl.blog/entry/how-to-osx-try-safari-promotion....
[1] https://lapcatsoftware.com/articles/TRYTHENEWSAFARI.html
I'm an advanced power user. There are no pop-ups, no nagging to use Edge, no search feature hostility, no crashes, nothing. Not one day has gone by where I think "wow this OS sucks, why haven't they addressed this issue". I play PC games on it, browse, code, image editing, etc. all without a single hiccup. It's been completely stable and user-friendly. I'm genuinely curious what is it specifically that bothers people about this OS because it sounds like complaining for the sake of complaining and not anything authentic at this point.
I'm a software developer at a FAANG and I use a Windows machine. I listen to my Mac user colleagues complain every week: "my application crashed", "I need to reboot", "I'm forced to update see you in an hour", "I have to shut down so I can reset permissions for this app", etc. They roll their eyes when they notice I'm running Windows, but then endlessly complain about their mac systems. The cognitive dissonance is staggering.
However that said, I'm extremely worried about Win 11, and when I saw all the things they changed in the taskbar (no text labels, no option to never combine icons), the right click menu and so on, I was very disappointed. I did get the send to menu back with a thing and I know you can use winaerotweaker to get all the old stuff back, but a part of me wants to be on the native OS stuff whenever possible and not change core OS with third party apps. But I'm also worried about what they might further do in the future and in 5-10 years, incompatibility in programs/etc with Win 10 might make using it very bothersome so you have to update at some point.
That said they can be tamed or disabled. My wife has a Windows 10 computer (home edition) and it doesn’t prompt her for anything - searches for files are all local, etc. Most of these annoyances are fixed by reading the options when you install the OS. The few that remain are a quick google search away.
I feel like people are over dramatizing this.
“Microsoft Advertising 88 MILLION new desktop searchers joined last year
Search is at the center of online shopping 88-90% of online shoppers used search. Meanwhile, only 39% used social in their shopping journeys. Two. Most searchers are open to switching brands In fact, 3 out of 4 searchers we studied visited multiple brands' websites while they shopped.
Entice them to buy from your business with Dynamic Search Ads. Three. Online shopping journeys vary greatly On average, 45% of purchase journeys lasted 30+ days. But some, like grocery shopping, lasted only 2 days.
Target ready-to-buy shoppers with In-market audiences.“
Also one that's, erm, been flying under the radar for a long time because I've been getting these things for years. Not sure about parent but this is pretty well-known by people who've had to deal with it.
- the advertising domain is not bought by markmonitor whereas microsoft.com, office.com, and outlook.com all are. Maybe this advertising domain isn't an important enough brand or maybe some other reason. The DNS servers for all four domains are NS1-{0..99}.azure-dns.com, NS2-{0..99}.azure-dns.net, and two other TLDs for NS3 and NS4, and always in the same order
- IP space is all AS8068 and AS8075 (checking the same four domains)
- I tried duckduckgo for "how to differentiate between azure customers and microsoft ip space" but didn't find anyone asking that question anywhere. Probably bad phrasing on my part
- I tried looking for websites hosted by Azure to see if there is an IP space for customers by searching ddg for "powered by azure" and "hosted with azure" but I only get results from Microsoft themselves, random garbage, and things like "azure lessons" that aren't hosted with azure at all (heh)
I would also have expected this to be not-Microsoft-owned and a scam, but I'm failing to prove that hypothesis. That would mean Microsoft is not the company that I thought it was: I thought the difference between Facebook,Google and Microsoft,Apple is that some are in the business of manipulating people and others sell honest products (even if I have other issues with locked-down Apple devices, at least it's not adtech). Looking for revenue streams, I found <https://www.kamilfranek.com/assets/images/microsoft_revenue_...>. So not quite adtech but ads was the biggest growing product last year and has been growing for at least a decade (also based on other sources). Interesting.
(as an aside, I like UIs from the 90s but it's jarring when you fall out of the regular glossy experience into like totallylegitimatemicrosoftazure.com or whatever)
1. The right click context menu change
2. The highlight around windows on Alt + Tab got very hard to see
I just gave up in a week and got a new machine with Win 10 from IT. Had to install everything from scratch.
I'm also wondering if you can just run server editions.
Also, my country's second hand electronics market has LTSC keys for sale for like $25. That might be worth looking into.
I share these feelings deeply. Furthermore, what Microsoft (and other large tech companies) put people through via their systems, feels like an abusive relationship to me. FOSS, for the most part, aligns much closer to my idea of computation. A kernel of deep contempt remained in me however, from my old days of using, and hacking, my Windows system which just never worked long in the way I wanted it to. And I remember reading news on Microsoft proposals such as "Trusted Computing", where the idea was that Windows would scan your files when they are being opened, to determine if it's a legitimate copy and refuse to work with it if it's not approved[0]. That was such an outrageous idea to me back in mid 2000s that it cemented in me that I won't give Microsoft any money. Which of course softened, over the years, I bought second hand Windows licenses for computers I set up for others, for example, but still... the one installation I have to keep around for gaming, will never be a legitimate copy as long as I can manage.
For added fun, the KMS emulator I'm using is open source, and runs on Linux :)
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trusted_Computing#Digital_righ...
The LTS release was meant for Kiosk and pseudo embedded applications but was pretty much a non hostil UX version of Windows 10. In comparison even Windows 10 Professional editions are very bloated.
I am not sure if they intend to have an analogue Windows 11 LTS but I suppose the need will probably be there for customers who are more Windows-centric.
If you can't understand the political, philosophical and sociological nuances of selecting between Windows and Linux as computing environments, and why this is more than just a simple UI preference, that's something you should work on.
Sarcasm is also something you should work on.
See you next time.
I did "look back" for certain AAA games that either don't work on Linux or DO work but their launcher doesn't (e.g., Blizzard), but AAA game companies have done me the solid of hypercommercializing themselves into unbearable mediocrity. So, even if I want to play one of those games now, I'm not too hurried to wait for a few years so Proton support makes it available (plus you get it cheaper, with bugfixes, all DLCs, and your hardware can run it better).
I play wow, ow2 and such just fine from the launcher. so give it a try again if you've been avoiding it.
I just love Gnome.
Oh and I run Linux on a Surface Laptop.
They lost the mobile phone because of their stupidity. Now trying to lose desktop too?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PN-WEBd8obc
But select text and search in browser option seems to be really reasonable.
I hate start menu ads and edge default pages because they have animation which beings rdp to a crawl.
Of course if Apple starts with this stuff they too will start going down market and open an opportunity for someone else to own the high end.
If I pay for it it better not have ads. If something I pay for starts adding ads I cancel.
It very well may be superficially my fault these things happen, due to customizations or features I’ve enabled or disabled, or software I’ve installed, or due to my company web policies and firewalls, but I have no way to track down the causes. The true culprit though, IMO, is the blurring of the line between application software and operating system. Allowing all these hooks into basic OS functionality seems like a bad idea. It’s crazy that opening the menu to log out or shut down will first go out to the web to scrape some news headlines or shopping suggestions for me, crazy I say!
[1]: https://keypirinha.com/
At least it's possible to disable all the web search features etc. and have it just open my apps like I wanted.
A computer running (and not sleeping) while you're asleep or at work is a waste of energy.
Why would Microsoft not advertise in their browser when supposed competition is doing the same. Like, switch to Google and get their tracking, switch to Firefox and get their ads, ... "might as well stay with Edge" becomes a more realistic proposition every day.
[I'd personally probably move to links before using Edge, but that's just me.]
It was much better when it didn't try to be smart.
Slow as molasses.
See also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30019307.
...which explains the disturbing similarity between macOS 13's System Settings and the same in Windows 11.
But even if it's true, that doesn't make any difference to me. I'm still forced to use it myself.
Their market is the enterprise world where they have a lock in, plus gamers and PC users who cannot afford a Mac. It shows.
Not a problem for me. I have no issue using a bad OS if a company is paying me for using it, and at home I don't use Windows.
With MacBooks (and other Apple products) you can often recoup 70%-80% of your initial cost as long as it's in good condition.
Note that Swappa takes a 3% cut, so the buyer would actually see around ~$650.
https://swappa.com/guide/macbook-air-2020-13/prices
They're still great little machines - like my still-running 2010 Air (so retro I keep it around for kicks) - I expect these to last pretty much forever.
Great for the kids/elderly when configured properly. Minimal support effort. My kids treat them like their Nintendos and they just work.
> Their market is the enterprise world where they have a lock in, plus gamers and PC users who cannot afford a Mac. It shows.
Their market is:
1) The enterprise world, where they have a lock in.
2) Gamers.
3) PC users who cannot afford a Mac.
And stupid - their execs are chasing myopic short term gains with aggressive stongarm tactics, while long-term I and probably a million others are running for the exit, and doing our best to never use Windows, Azure, Outlook, Office etc again.
So few companies out there seen to care about their long term reputation.
Sadly, the number of people who will actually run for the exit is much, much smaller. People on HN are completely unrepresentative of the general population. I'm pretty sure MS has people who do user retention as part of design research, it is standard in the industry before rolling out a feature to all users. Especially when switching costs are high, even people who hate ads get used to them after a very short time. Plus, everyone who can afford a Mac and doesn't mind being locked-in to the Apple ecosystem is already there.
Every mainstream platform is already inundated with ads. Social media is full of ads and sponsored posts. Most 'news' sites have gotten so bad that content is only 25-50% of the screen. E-commerce marketplaces from Amazon to Walmart are compromised and corrupted. People may run from one ad-saturated platform or site to another, but the norm is ads everywhere. If they're not running from that, would they notice or care about this?
People and governments are collectively getting fed up with surveillance capitalism.
One can hope.
I'm thinking maybe a site that has a way for users to pick things that matter to them and then recommend an OS and software would be a good idea.
What’s interesting is that MS is doing things that the EU already gave substantial fine for making a browser default.
Doesn't matter as long as the number is growing. As it grows, more people will tell others that they switched and it's better. It's slow to start but eventually it becomes unstoppable. I think Microsoft will keep the business desktop but they will lose the home desktop. When that happens, Eventually, games won't even be made for Windows anymore, like Macs today.
i do miss Foobar2000 and HeidiSQL (DeaDBeeF and DBeaver aren't quite as polished), and Affinity products are hard to get running without glitches in Wine/Proton, but otherwise it's been fantastic. though i've had to fiddle quite a bit with Chromium and MPV settings to enable GPU hardware acceleration for video decoding.
first straw was slow filesystem access due to Windows Defender, last straw was unstoppable Windows updates full of ad garbage and apps i previously removed with various debloating scripts. i ran Windows 10 with these addons to get back a more Windows XP experience:
disable TPM v2.0 (keep it at v1.2) to forever prevent Windows 11 upgrades: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/enable-tpm-2-0-o...
debloat: https://github.com/farag2/Sophia-Script-for-Windows. there's also LTSC, but it's basically impossible to purchase an actual license, so you have to pirate it: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/windows-it-pro-blog/l...
start menu: https://github.com/Open-Shell/Open-Shell-Menu
taskbar: https://ramensoftware.com/7-taskbar-tweaker
search: https://goffconcepts.com/products/filesearchex/index.html
archives: https://www.7-zip.org/
task manager: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/pro...
Notepad replacement: https://github.com/rizonesoft/Notepad3
Basic flow:
As a counter point my old wireless canon printer works flawlessly out of its old box with Linux but getting it to work on windows 10 is full of confusing tips on forums, confusing and experimental drivers to install. Nightmare.
Thing is, to me as an end user it doesn't matter who's at fault, if it doesn't work it doesn't work and I'm only so motivated to investigate something (functionality wise) basic not working while on Windows all the basics run fine but the advanced stuff creates problems. With Linux on desktop I never arrived at the advanced stuff giving up at (some of) the basic stuff not working out of the box.
But I fully understand, from a technical standpoint drivers and daisy chained display probably aren't basic and Windows has hidden als the complexity from me for the last 20 years.
It's really only NVIDIA that's proprietary.
My own experience of modern Linux is very different to yours. I don't think I've had to completely clean and reinstall any Linux system I use - desktop or server - for over a decade. Some of those systems have been through multiple full OS upgrades in that time but those were done in place and usually without losing anything (or gaining anything unwanted).
It's obviously not perfect. Some of the recent Wayland changes got released by some distros before some of the applications that do video calls were fully ready for them and that caused problems with remote working for example. But it's paradise compared to the danger of installing any modern version of Windows or any Apple OS and getting serious regressions or overtly user-hostile new "features" that you can't turn off.
I do think there's room for a modern desktop OS that doesn't have all the historical baggage of Linux. Not having a permissions model that sandboxes apps and the data they work with by default seems very outdated in 2022 for example. The traditional filesystem hierarchy is unnecessarily complicated and not well suited to modern systems. We rely on container technologies for professional work now because the package management and installation/update mechanics are so fragile (though no worse than Windows or macOS IMHO). I just wish the barriers to entry weren't so high now that it is tough for anyone to build a new desktop OS from the ground up any more.
Second point false, unless you're using something obscure and/or one of the pure only open source variants.
Third point. This is down to experience. But when you do decide to do a full reinstall it's done in about 5 minutes. Can't complain about that!
You didn't state which distro or package manager you were dealing with but there is a LOT more third-party support for DEB packages than the others, so that may also be why you had problems.
So, depending on your use case, you might be able to make the switch without any significant drawbacks.
FWIW, I say this as a former Microsoft employee and heavy promoter of their ecosystem for the first 15 years of my career.
Learn from the ancient wisdom. Say no to demons.
Hence we should fight for open hardware.
I don't particularly mind this. Apple already forces Safari down our throats at every turn. And Edge is honestly a pretty great browser. Unless you're a Mozilla purist, there's really no better choice on Windows at this point.
Edge is the only browser I’ve ever used that tries to sell me some sort of credit card deal or reward points or some shit. Got a popup just yesterday when testing a browser extension of mine on Edge.
Oh, yes,here is. It's the browers I chose to prefer to install, and its the only one i chose* to use on a daily basis.
Edit: Although apparently "Open Shell" can replace the Windows 10 start menu, so I guess it's not impossible.
But people usually prefer replacing just the Start menu, or just making tweaks to how the regular task bar works.