Mint is the easiest to transition to. I install that on all my elderly family's machines. Makes troubleshooting much easier.
On my personal machine, I did just switch back to Windows last year. While gaming in Linux has come quite a way, there were just too many games that are still incompatible.
1. Word works just fine in a web browser. Yes, it's not the full featured version, but I don't need the full featured version.
2. I know a lot of people even on Windows who use Gimp because they get more value out of using Gimp for free than paying for an Adobe subscription.
3. I don't really see much in the way of random problems on Linux, but even if I did, I'll take that over the constant problems caused by ads embedded in the OS.
Both Photoshop and Word are industry standards. For Photoshop, one can't just swap it out, and if you think one can then that only shows you are not even a novice user, much less a professional who needs it for work.
With all respect, only a very small minority of Windows users actually *need Photoshop for work.* If you are one of them, I fully agree, you need Photoshop.
As for Word, I use Word (unwillingly) for work, and I am able to get what I need from just the web version. My "complicated" documents are typeset in LaTeX, not Word, and LaTeX is the standard in my industry.
People usually need one major thing out of their Office software: the ability to open and save Office documents from other people. LibreOffice is not there, nor will it ever be, because at the end of the day, it's the user's risk to use a non first party software.
It's not about the actual capabilities of the software, it's about getting along with other humans. And the power dynamics of that.
Now, to be fair, first-party MS Office also has this problem. The online versions can't handle absolutely everything that the desktop applications generate (although they do better than Libreoffice), and even compatibility between, say, Office 95 and modern MS Office is not 100%. I believe MS Office is architecturally incapable of complete compatibility, since its file format is basically a binary dump tied to the current version.
One of the many reasons why my particular industry has standardized on TeX/LaTeX/PDF is because it gets along much better with other humans in terms of file format compatibility over the time scale of decades.
Indeed they do. It's a farce that schools, governments use MS Office and treat the document formats as a standard, because they are too volatile to work like that. But alas, here we are. The phenomenon I describe exist and it doesn't just exist, Microsoft made it happen consciously. Windows as the de-facto standard application platform for the PC is another such achievement of theirs. Is not perfect as well, is similarly entrenched.
For what it's worth, I use LibreOffice and I even conduct my business with open source tools, as much as I can. Usually I get away with it, and for the rest, there's a Windows VM ready to go.
This is so ridiculous it hurts my soul. Hey Microsoft, maybe work on software quality and security and skip the ads.
How long until an adversary figures out a way to inject something nasty through the ad network? Only a matter of time. I can’t wait for the Blackhat talk.
> How long until an adversary figures out a way to inject something nasty through the ad network? Only a matter of time. I can’t wait for the Blackhat talk.
Microsoft don’t care, they want to serve their ads, sell your data to the highest bidder and to hell with the users.
"The problem with Microsoft is they just have no taste. They have no taste and I don't mean that in a small way, I mean that in a big way" - Steve Jobs
It might be how I use my phone. I don’t install many apps, don’t use the weird search shit, and generally just use it for communication and navigation.
Go search for something on your phone. There's a bar with "Siri Suggestions" right up top showing apps you should install (exactly the same as this Windows screenshot).
Open any first-party app on the OS (News, Stocks, Maps, Books, Fitness, Wallet and more) and every surface has ads.
Go to the App Store and search for something. The top results are always ads. Go to an app page and you will see more suggested apps at the bottom. Most of the store is sponsored content.
I have yet to go a few weeks without getting an unsolicited push notification asking me to subscribe to Apple Music, Apple One, Apple TV, Apple News, Fitness+, iCloud.
The freaking settings app has ads for Apple services.
The two companies are the same, the only real difference being that Apple users have blinders on.
I think there are location based suggestions -- but (like you) I've only seen them for apps I already have installed. When in the app switcher, I believe I saw Home Depot app suggested while I was at a Home Depot. I thought that was neat, rather than intrusive.
I'm not entirely sure I get the outrage about app ads in the App Store. I also don't get mad at the existence of end-caps, signs and promotions at the grocery story, either, though. It's a store. But, I'd be infuriated if distracting ads were added to the Dock or Finder, or I had to read past randomly placed ads in menus necessary for every day operation.
I turn Siri off because it's just not useful for me, so I don't see the Siri Suggestions. But I hate how it badgers me about setting Siri up in the Settings app every update. I have to turn it on and then off to get rid of the banner.
>In the News and Stocks apps, the display ads are no different than what you might get on an ad-supported website (see above). [...]
>On the App Store, display ads are currently shown in the search tab in the Suggested panel. Apple will also soon expand ads to the main Today tab and within third-party app download pages. Search ads in the App Store are a bit different: Developers can pay to have their app featured in results when a user searches terms like “car racing” or “basketball,” for instance.
So Google's business model of having ads in the search results was problematic even before they started spying on the whole world to enable larger profits from targeted ads?
The search menu, all first party apps, app store, push notifications, even the settings pages all have ads, and the ad surface has been increasing with every update. The exact ad in this screenshot has been on iOS for many years. People who fail to acknowledge it or move the goal posts are heavily drinking the kool aid.
Just go into the Settings app and you'll see "get Apple Arcade for free 3 months" under your name, and a bright red badge telling you your "free iCloud storage is full" and pushing you to pay for more storage, despite you disabling iCloud storage and repeatedly trying to make the badge go away. Or maybe the home screen notifications that tell you your iCloud storage is full on your lock screen. Or the pushes that try to get you to sign up for AppleTV+. Those ads.
When I click your link I immediately see an image with this caption:
> Steve Jobs announces the since-discontinued iAd service in 2010.Photographer: David Paul Morris
Maybe you could clarify what you were trying to say by posting this article? Are you suggesting that apple is engaged in similar behavior to the original post? That the quote about taste from Steve Jobs is ironic given something you took from the article? Did you just find the article relevant and really don’t have anything to say beyond its contents?
> Maybe you could clarify what you were trying to say by posting this article? Are you suggesting that apple is engaged in similar behavior to the original post
Yes. There's plenty of discussion elsewhere in this thread which explains it.
Agreed - iPhone ux is incredible but design is perpetually inoffensive and meh. On the other hand, Microsoft put fucking fabric on their laptops and it’s amazing.
That's like the industrial design version of Seinfeld Isn't Funny. At one point, Apple's sleek unobtrusive design was a revolution compared to 90s and 2000s garishness. And there's something timeless about it.
>"The problem with Microsoft is they just have no taste."
Says nanny. Sorry Steve. I need computer / OS combo to serve my needs. Not to admire. In my opinion with all their flaws Windows fares better and is more versatile for what I do. And Linux runs my business.
The original quote [1] is nuanced. This claim is trivially true.
Microsoft is a company that says 'yes' to every feature request with no regard for how it comes together as a whole. "Everything and the kitchen sink" is not a bug, it is their MO. They don't shy away from it.
The frustrating part is that on my older Win10 laptop, it goes "This PC doesn't currently meeting the minimum system requirements to run Windows 11, Get the details and see if there are things you can do in the PC Health Check app." in the Windows Update section.
Ok, I've installed that, and there's no way I can update to Windows 11, there's no TPM chip.
Go back to Windows Update, the prompt is still there, it has no connection to the fact that my laptop cannot physically update to Win11 nor does it know I've run the PC Health Check app multiple times.
Like, seriously? Stop wasting my screen real-estate with an ad for a product that cannot be used on the device. Hitting X makes it go away until my next reboot.
This was so inevitable it’s comical. Microsoft has been the face of Enshittification in my mind for years now but hoooo boy does this put the icing on the cake.
With gaming on Linux finally becoming fairly mainstream I just cannot justify using windows anymore. There’s literally no reason to use a Microsoft product in 2024.
That’s a leap. Microsoft makes plenty of things that aren’t Windows. And let’s not conflate “literally no reason to use” with “literally no alternative for”. Microsoft is big. There are pockets that deliver value to people.
But, to be clear, I’ve not willingly used Windows since 2008.
The only issues i've had with windows 11 in six months is with an enterprise grade dual 10gbit network card, and even that isn't a windows thing - whenever i join voice chat on discord it completely nukes the network connection with a "No Resources" error from "ping.exe". Discord support threw up their hands and said "reinstall the bleeding edge version or contact the developer support directly here:"
It suffers about the same amount from my setup of dual monitors (as winten and linux) but one is 4k DP and the other FHD HDMI and the hilarity from display scaling (or DPI scaling or whatever), but other than those two thorns i haven't had any issues, and i abuse my computer. my list of available soundcards has a scroll bar on it, for instance. I read, game, and do ML inference on it whenever i use it, and it's been solid.
However, i paid next to nothing for 3 win 11 pro licenses, so my opinion is a bit biased. if i had paid $750 for those licenses (or whatever it costs, it's a free download, michael, how much could it possibly cost) i'd probably have a different opinion about the thorns i experience.
I used to run windows in a qemu VM with GPU and USB passthrough, on gentoo. I'm very used to thorns in computing.
At least now there are options that mean there's almost no reason one would ever use Windows.
I'm more worried about these practices infesting the next round of software, currently on track to be AI tools. Microsoft's behavior needs to be a cautionary example of why open source alternatives and variety generally are so important, and we need to reject regulations and corporate maneuvering that would prevent real variety in whatever is next. Companies like microsoft have learned their lesson about not taking open source seriously and not locking in their customers enough, and they are working hard to fix their mistakes for the next time around.
It’s been like this for a long time. I’ll never understand why businesses would use this garbage os. Even if it’s ad free with Pro or Business editions
We've also rebuilt our Docker images to use Debian and Alpine as the base (there are a few different images), and coming up we'll probably change our baseline development platform from Ubuntu to Debian or similar (TBD).
When that's complete, Ubuntu will be just one choice among many for our users, rather than the only supported choice.
Nixos kind of bothers me, not for anything that it did wrong, but for the fact that it’s so obviously the “correct” way of doing things to me that it’s annoying that it’s not the default in every system.
Its declarative nature is so much easier to work with, and doing the tmpfs as root trick makes it more fun to experiment with the knowledge that you won’t break anything that can’t be fixed with a reboot.
I would really like to get my T9 MacBook on Nixos but I have had a lot of issues when I attempted that, and suspend is still broken.
I tried using nix maybe 8 or 9 years ago (and further back if memory serves) and i was going to make question mark faces at you, but i asked chatgpt how to install and use firefox on nix and it's `nix-env -iA nixos.firefox` which strikes me as... fine?
It confuses me because how is that different or better than pacman -S or apt install or emerge -va? Especially portage?!
That particular command isn’t really different than pacman or apt.
Most of the time, though, with Nix, you don’t install stuff that way. In Nixos, there’s a configuration.nix file, and you add the package you want to to that file (along with all the other system configs). Then you effectively “rebuild” the OS based on that configuration, and a snapshot is created. Since this configuration is just text, it can be version controlled and backed up to GitHub or something.
If your hard drive crashes or something, you can reinstall Nixos from the config in like fifteen minutes.
If you just need the program temporarily, you can do “nix-shell -p neovim”, which will create a temporary shell where neon can be executed. Once you exit the shell, the binary is unlinked and will be eventually garbage collected.
There’s more, but the tl;dr is that can make stuff a lot more declarative while also allowing for stuff to be more ephemeral.
> Microsoft is seeking feedback on the changes, so it’s possible the company could decide to ditch these ads in development builds of Windows 11 if there’s enough feedback that suggests they’re not going to be a popular addition.
Just Say No.
Windows leadership recently changed for the better. Hopefully these misguided ads are a vestige of the outgoing leader, who previously lead consumer advertising, but has now been pushed out. Microsoft has a once-in-a-generation opportunity with Arm laptops based on Qualcomm/Nuvia (ex-Apple), this is not the time to squander that opportunity with distractions like advertising.
After Windows and Surface chief Panos Panay departed Microsoft last year, the software giant quickly split his two divisions into two different teams. It was a move designed to push Windows engineers to focus on more web and AI features under Mikhail Parakhin, who was previously responsible for Bing and ads. It didn’t work out. Six months after that shake-up, Windows and Surface are back together under a new leader, following frustrations from the very top of Microsoft..
Parakhin was responsible for Microsoft’s reborn advertising business and all of the company’s ad-based consumer businesses.. the web experiences team that Parakhin led had a different culture from the rest of Microsoft that often resulted in micromanaging and “insane deadlines” for projects.. The Windows and Web Experiences (WWE) team that Parakhin briefly oversaw also developed the malware-like Bing pop-ups we’ve seen appear in Windows recently..
The new Windows and Surface chief, Davuluri, is experienced when it comes to the combination of hardware and software that Microsoft needs to get right in this new era of AI. Davuluri has worked at Microsoft for more than 23 years and has been at the heart of Surface engineering. He was deeply involved in the company’s work with Qualcomm and AMD to create custom Surface processors.
If they had any intention of listening to user feedback they never would have started this project because the feedback is obviously going to be negative.
At the very "best" they will cherry-pick a few metrics that show that it is a "popular addition".
Parakhin is leaving his current position and “has decided to explore new roles” according to a Microsoft internal memo obtained by The Verge. He will report to Kevin Scott, the previous face of Microsoft’s AI efforts, during a transition phase. But it sounds like Parakhin will be leaving Microsoft soon.
I'm still not sure this is simply because of leadership. MS has been pushing ads on Windows over at least 10 years. And in fact this is a pretty natural move for the product in the saturated market. You're not going to "grow" anymore by traditional user acquisition and failed to enter the mobile market, then you need to build a new segment.
This environment gives a strong incentive toward ads-based business model for the Windows division. There likely is an army of PM desperately looking for new growth opportunities and decided to put ads everywhere since this is a so obvious strategy with low risk, high ROI. Changing a single or two senior leadership can help reversing this trends, but it's not sufficient.
This is very naive thinking that all the ads came with Mikhail Parakhin. He only lead Windows for 6 months.
Windows have ads since Windows 10, 9 years ago. There was several leadership changes on Windows in those 9 years. And the ads continued every single leadership.
The reason these ads exists, it's because Microsoft can't profit anymore on Windows itself (they don't sell updates), they don't have a store with enough users/dev to monetize on it, and they don't sell enough hardware like apple to profit from it as well.
So there's only two things left for them: ads or subscription
Btw, this "ad" actually already existed on Windows 10.
If I’m not mistaken, it’s illegal in the US to place advertisements alongside content without distinguishing them. I don’t see a marker in the screenshot; is this simply a problem with the beta?
The article calls them ads, but in the linked blog post Microsoft only calls them "recommended apps". There's a difference between the two, and the latter doesn't have to be marked as sponsored if Microsoft is coming up with the recommendation themselves.
The distinction matters when the advertiser is paying for the slot.
Do you not see a difference between sponsored results in Google search that came via paid ads and the rest of the top results that came via their own algorithm?
Your use of the word “algorithm” carries a heavy load there. What’s that algorithm? How do we know paid ads aren’t prioritized or monetized there? Where’s Microsoft’s promise on clear distinction for paid ads?
Why does The Verge and Engadget call them “effectively ads”? What do you know that they don’t know?
What an incredible coincidence that they introduce ads in the official start menu around the same time that they begin blocking third party start menu replacements.
They do have some legitimate reason to want to block specific versions of those apps if they cause stability issues on a new build of Windows, but at least in the case of StartAllBack the developer noted it isn't targeted at a specific version this time, it's a wildcard block.
Lovely! I rely on StartAllBack to make my Windows 11 work machine actually useful. At least renaming the executable works for now. Microsoft seems hellbent on making their products worse and worse. I guess this is more incentive for me to get a new job not working in a Windows shop.
I mean it isn't a coincidence. But this framing is pretty negative.
These apps broke and started crashing because they were updating the start menu. Probably related to the addition of ads.
Then they blocked these versions because they were crashing.
It doesn't seem like they are making any effort to block versions that don't cause crashes. (Other than maybe making it a bit harder to keep updating to new internal APIs)
It really doesn't seem like they are purposely breaking these tools so that more people see the ads. It is probably such a tiny market that they don't care at this point. They'll definitely ship the ads to 99.9% of users first before they worry about this unaddressed market.
> It doesn't seem like they are making any effort to block versions that don't cause crashes.
See the Tweet I linked, Windows does have a mechanism to only block a specific range of version numbers that are known to cause issues, and they have used that on StartIsBack/StartAllBack before, but the most recent Windows build simply blocks StartAllBack*.exe without any bounds on the version.
The developer can get around the block by changing the filenames of course but that's not really the point, if Microsoft is being actively hostile towards this kind of customisation now then they're just going to keep breaking it on purpose.
I dislike this change as much as most people here. However, I do see a situation where it could be warranted. They might simply block all versions because there aren't any version that are actually compatible yet, and once there are it'll get updated. That of course presumes they'll continue treating StartAllBack as they have been so far.
Innocent until proven guilty. Why block future versions where the developer has fixed issues. Not a user has to wait for the developer to fix the issue and for Microsoft to update their blocklist. It’s hostile behavior that doesn’t make sense unless you want to push users away from these apps. They probably consider any start menu that doesn’t carry their ads as “broken”.
My standard start menu replacement was always to add a "run" folder with program shortcuts to the system path, then just "Win+R" to Run and e.g. "kp" to run KeyPass. Until Windows 10 this was super fast - no idea whether they've managed to break even the Run dialog after this.
Prior to Windows 10, you could do "Win+R", calc, enter and immediately start typing numbers because the calculator app launched instantly. They have also managed to add lag to the most basic calculator as well.
On my Windows 11 laptop, there's a short delay from when I press Win and when it accepts keystrokes. It commonly misses the first letter I type, making Win + fire (for Firefox) do an internet search in Edge for "ire".
That's the Win key ad auction delay, they're just getting you used to it. Every time you press that key an auction is held for your eyes, to be sold to the highest bidder.
Normally something like this should be ended with a </sarcasm> tag but I'm fairly sure this is soon to be - if not already - more fact than fiction.
The solution? Ditch Windows. The pot is boiling, the frog has long since passed so bury it and move to greener pastures (no, not those used in the XP background). There is a Linux waiting for you, somewhere - take your pick and run with it.
I’ve recently installed Win11 on my new computer, and immediately discovered Microsoft decided to implement keyboard lag in that version. Luckily, that “animation effects” checkbox did the trick for me.
This sounds like a skewed perspective. For instance, I use Proton Mail. Proton Mail released a UI for Linux, Windows, and Apple a few months ago. Does this mean my Linux version of the Proton Mail app is 7 years behind?
Debian releases normally come out every 2 years. The last version came out in 2023 with the kernel version that came out 1.5 years ago, a libreoffice version from the same time frame and a firefox version from 10 months ago (ESR with up to date security fixes).
"7 years" is intended as hyperbole? On average, your Debian Stable versions will be 1 year old, plus security updates.
Debian Stable keeps everything stable, and something I want a newer version of (say, the latest version of some browser, for developing with a new feature), I just install separately. Everything else is very low drama.
For example I search for "spoti", and I get "Get Spotify...". Clicking that it opens Discover, the app install/update thingy and it shows an error message: "Could not open appstream://com.spotify.client because it was not found in any available software repositories". Very Linux-y, am I right? Debian Bookworm with KDE, I installed it back when bookworm was testing, but now it's stable.
I find I can disable this "Get X software" type search result when I right click the start menu icon, Configure App Launcher, click Configue enabled Seach plugins, and then disable Software Center.
My clients are firms in the architecture and engineering space. Windows is the only viable platform for AutoCAD (yes, I know there is a Mac version, and yes it is shall we say "feature incomplete") or Revit (yes, I know that ArchiCAD runs on a Mac, but if you're a MechE firm and you want to land jobs you run Revit) or Tekla or Rhino. Microsoft is making it more and more painful for my clients to get their work done and get paid. My kingdom for something better, but until Linux gets reliable native support for Autodesk applications etc it's simply not a viable solution for most firms in AEC.
I just recently set up Debian with KDE on my media server after years without using the GUI, and I'm finding myself using it for light browsing now. I just forget to open my laptop.
Linux has gotten pretty friendly, even on a distro less focused on home users and features. I don't foresee installing Windows for myself again.
Even if the new Snapdragon X Elite were a generation ahead of Apple's M3, I still wouldn't buy a Windows laptop because of shenanigans like this. I bought into the hype with the original Surface Book (mine is completely unusable due to hardware defects with the hinge).
My MIL has one of the Surface Laptops, and recently brought it to me because the battery was bulging. I looked into it, and what a maintenance nightmare. One guy on youtube had a battery fail under warranty and they sent him a whole new one, and told him to just recycle the old one; apparently even Microsoft doesn't want to repair them.
They keyboard/trackpad panel is alcantara, and is glued to the bottom cover (or was until the batteries swelled). I had to cut and pry this later off. But even then, the connector for the battery requires you to remove basically all the components (speakers, heatsinks, fans, wifi card, a bunch of RF shielding that is micro-spot welded in place, the display, the motherboard. The battery connector is a pad that the back of the motherboard has contacts that mate to it.
I told my in-laws that there was a better than even chance that I'd destroy it while doing the repair, and I'd give it a shot, but they should be prepared to buy a new one. They were ready to go buy one instead of me doing the repair, but I told them I was happy to do it and went ahead and was able to get'r'done.
I guess some of that is the price of it being so thin and light. My MIL got it because she's kind of frail and wanted something super light. Which it definitely is. It's a marvel of engineering. But, ultimately, disposable.
It's unbelievable that whoever runs Windows seems to be diametrically opposed to the rest of the company. It's a decent operating system apparently ran by bean counters.
I just swapped to a MacBook for $job and my last Windows 10 VM will be gone as soon as I finish migrating from Lightroom to DigiKam, maybe in a week or two. Everything else has been moved to Fedora Kinoite, including the kids gaming computer and the wife's workstation.
This is something I'm seeing a lot more now. More companies are allowing users to select Macs instead of Windows and a lot of people take them up on the offer.
Part of my salary negotiation for my last three jobs has been requiring that I get a new macbook, even if the default for everyone else is windows laptops. It hasn't been a problem so far and my life has been significantly improved by not using windows machines
What is the best opinionated, minimal, happy-path-only, official-feeling landing page for Linux? A quick search right now didn't bring up anything I could endorse to a normie.
Normally if I were recommending Linux to a friend, I would encourage them to use their existing computer rather than going out and buying new hardware just for Linux.
I recently installed Chrome OS Flex on an old Lenovo laptop. It's really quite snappy. I did it mainly out of curiosity. It was easy to install and bring up for the first time, and it's not loaded with crapware.
For a lot of home users, a "the browser is the new OS." If they're doing everything with cloud apps, then they really don't need to interact with a conventional desktop very much. Assuming they don't run Windows software such as games.
Battery life is no different than it was with Windows.
Linux mode was easy to set up, and hard for me to damage. ;-) And it doesn't seem to do anything to the Chrome OS machine, so you can wipe it and start over without re-installing the entire machine. Jupyter Notebook runs just fine, so I'm pretty much all set. Jupyter is practically my OS these days.
It depends on the use case. Linux often works well on desktop computers without too many fancy peripherals, but I generally do not recommend Linux as a laptop OS for “normies.”
I have installed various flavors of Linux on various laptops over the years, and 100% of the time there were tough-to-diagnose issues with hardware components. With one laptop, the brightness level could not be changed. With another, installing Linux caused the battery to drain three times as fast and hibernation didn’t work properly. With another, I accidentally played music so loud that the speakers broke.
These are all things that I was able to figure out using my Google skills and general knowledge of Linux, but it is not an experience I’d recommend for a “regular person.”
I dunno, I had pretty good luck with Ubuntu on my previous laptop. I do not remember the model number but it was an Asus ROG Strix, with an AMD processor and graphics card.
I did specifically buy it around peripherals that I knew were officially Linux supported, but the install on it was extremely painless. That laptop was a piece of shit that literally started disintegrating, but Linux was certainly not to blame there.
lol, this sounds exactly right. Vertical integration in computing is a feature, not a bug. It's amazing windows can do what it does on virtually -any- hardware.
I do wish Linux distros had some kind of "guaranteed hardware" support, where if you buy exactly the right components, it'll be a totally seamless experience
1. Frame.work looks to be all about modularizing laptop hardware, but it doesn't have particular support for any linux distros, and a quick glance at the forums (https://community.frame.work/c/framework-laptop/linux/91) looks like people are having the same compatibility issues.
2. Dell supports an Ubuntu that was released in March 2023.
3. "on my Lemur Pro 10, the touchpad didn't work on Linux Mint out of the box."
4. Works perfectly on "Kubuntu," which... is great! Vertical integration!
> It's amazing windows can do what it does on virtually -any- hardware.
Not disagreeing, but I think one of the major defining factors behind this is that most OEMs specifically design their hardware and drivers to work with Windows first. If they did the same for Linux instead, suddenly Linux would start to work with everything. Because having each individual piece of hardware support Linux has a much higher success rate than hoping an incomplete sweep over the available hardware by Linux will have covered everything that makes up a particular machine
I agree with the parent. Mint is billed as the user-friendly distro, and maybe it is technically the most user-friendly distro (I don't know), but even this supposedly so-simple-it-warrants-bitter-sarcasm documentation you've linked starts out incomprehensible to the layman at paragraph one.
I understand as a software person it's hard to have a generous perspective when trying to distinguish between "confusing only for the hopelessly computer illiterate" and "potentially confusing for regular computer users", but we should try to err toward giving people the benefit of the doubt.
> even this supposedly so-simple-it-warrants-bitter-sarcasm documentation you've linked starts out incomprehensible to the layman at paragraph one.
If that's incomprehensible to someone, then they're probably not going to be installing any operating system by themselves, Linux, Windows, or otherwise.
Siblings may not understand the question; or, more likely, there isn't an answer. I have "fixed" people's old computers all my life, and for the past 15 years or so i've been doing it by installing linux or giving them an RPi. RPi isn't doable anymore, for $100 or whatever they cost now you can get a used elitedesk or something that's 3 times better in nearly every metric. I also prefer the maintenance load of a debian derived OS when i'm the person they call with issues.
But to answer, my go to is either xubuntu or lubuntu for windows users, and kubuntu or mint for everyone else. Xubuntu first and lubuntu if for some reason Xubuntu wants to play stupid games (such as on elitedesks). There is some personal preference as to what makes a good "landing page", i think xubuntu's is a little better but they're both good (x and l ubuntus). Compare that to windows.com landing page, to contrast.
But your average windows user isn't googling "which linux should i get" because generally they've never heard of or do not understand what "linux" is. they're googling "how do i fix windows" - and getting back "how to fix drafty windows" from a search engine powered by linux. It takes evangelizing, and sometimes straight chaotic good "i'll fix your PC" and installing linux on it. There goes 99.5% of all "normal" user problems!
I've been using the *nix and linux since the mid 90s, and i still don't recommend anyone try it unless they're willing to sit on their PC and learn things. Sorry, not sorry. For the facebook/gmail/cnn/twitter browsers of the world, the three i listed above are just fine.
edited to add: it's a pity that WUBI is no more (last i knew, at least) - that would be how i would evangelize it for people that had mostly empty windows machines just for browsing the web and maybe some cute games (samegame for instance).
The PopOS! installation page[0] - PopOS was the only Linux distribution that had both nvidia drivers and touchpad scrolling working out-of-the-box on my laptop.
I tried several over the years, specifically looking for a good out of the box experience, GUI-first usage, and one that's stable over time, and after upgrades. Zorin OS fit the bill the most. I think the landing page is good as well.
You know, Apple isn’t a company that I love, and I have reasons to actively hate them, but it would be immensely surprising if they trying to pull this shit.
I haven’t used Windows in any serious capacity in about 15 years, swapping between macOS and Linux every couple years, and I am glad to not have any of my workflow based around Windows now, because I don’t want ads to be blasted in my face.
Once my current Mac breaks, I am probably going to go back to Nixos, but never Windows.
Edit:
Appears I was wrong. I have never noticed the ads but people are pointing out they are plastered around a lot, at least in some capacity. I don’t like that either. Maybe I should move over to Linux sooner than I thought, at least on my laptop.
The article calls them ads but in the linked blog post Microsoft only calls them "recommended apps". Pretty big difference between the two. Every OS does app recommendations. Go to the search bar on your iPhone and you'll see recommendations there as well.
No. I reinstalled a new OS when Ubuntu started putting text "suggestions" in my terminal, and ads are much more nefarious in term of resource consumption and attention whoring. The only reason i got through the hoops of installing a Fdroid was the google app store ads.
A retail Windows license isn't the same as an enterprise Windows license. Retails Windows licenses started with ads for OneDrive and Office in Settings, but now that they're reverting to their old, shameless ways, they're putting ads everywhere else too for retail users.
With a Windows Enterprise license, all of the ads can be turned off, or at least that was the practice.
I paid for Amazon Prime; shows were ad-free. Then they announced that they'd have ads. So I quit Prime. I'm not gonna pay to be advertised to. Other streamers tiered options make sense to me, and if I had to I'd pare down the service to meet budget.
198 comments
[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 316 ms ] threadOn my personal machine, I did just switch back to Windows last year. While gaming in Linux has come quite a way, there were just too many games that are still incompatible.
2. I know a lot of people even on Windows who use Gimp because they get more value out of using Gimp for free than paying for an Adobe subscription.
3. I don't really see much in the way of random problems on Linux, but even if I did, I'll take that over the constant problems caused by ads embedded in the OS.
Ah, I thought we were talking about normal users, not the sliver of professionals that use photoshop for their job.
I bet djao thought the same thing.
Which makes the rest of your comment a misaimed criticism.
As for Word, I use Word (unwillingly) for work, and I am able to get what I need from just the web version. My "complicated" documents are typeset in LaTeX, not Word, and LaTeX is the standard in my industry.
It's not about the actual capabilities of the software, it's about getting along with other humans. And the power dynamics of that.
One of the many reasons why my particular industry has standardized on TeX/LaTeX/PDF is because it gets along much better with other humans in terms of file format compatibility over the time scale of decades.
For what it's worth, I use LibreOffice and I even conduct my business with open source tools, as much as I can. Usually I get away with it, and for the rest, there's a Windows VM ready to go.
How long until an adversary figures out a way to inject something nasty through the ad network? Only a matter of time. I can’t wait for the Blackhat talk.
Microsoft don’t care, they want to serve their ads, sell your data to the highest bidder and to hell with the users.
They are promoted apps from the Microsoft store.
>> They are promoted apps from the Microsoft store.
If you give Microsoft money and they promote your app, that is advertising.
Not saying Apple isn’t vulnerable to the siren song if the ad industry and its relentless drive to ruin everything, but MS is quite far gone.
I find it hard to believe you dodged the App Store ads.
Open any first-party app on the OS (News, Stocks, Maps, Books, Fitness, Wallet and more) and every surface has ads.
Go to the App Store and search for something. The top results are always ads. Go to an app page and you will see more suggested apps at the bottom. Most of the store is sponsored content.
I have yet to go a few weeks without getting an unsolicited push notification asking me to subscribe to Apple Music, Apple One, Apple TV, Apple News, Fitness+, iCloud.
The freaking settings app has ads for Apple services.
The two companies are the same, the only real difference being that Apple users have blinders on.
What are you talking about? I’ve never seen an app that’s not on my phone already in Siri suggestions.
>In the News and Stocks apps, the display ads are no different than what you might get on an ad-supported website (see above). [...]
>On the App Store, display ads are currently shown in the search tab in the Suggested panel. Apple will also soon expand ads to the main Today tab and within third-party app download pages. Search ads in the App Store are a bit different: Developers can pay to have their app featured in results when a user searches terms like “car racing” or “basketball,” for instance.
It's also showing ads for the cloud service in the settings app and will create notifications for apple arcade and apple music.
You're either already a customer or you'll get ads, so yeah. iOS has ads for quiet some time now.
It's just as unnecessary and annoying as Microsoft shilling for their annoying windows drive and office
The search menu, all first party apps, app store, push notifications, even the settings pages all have ads, and the ad surface has been increasing with every update. The exact ad in this screenshot has been on iOS for many years. People who fail to acknowledge it or move the goal posts are heavily drinking the kool aid.
Maybe you could clarify what you were trying to say by posting this article? Are you suggesting that apple is engaged in similar behavior to the original post? That the quote about taste from Steve Jobs is ironic given something you took from the article? Did you just find the article relevant and really don’t have anything to say beyond its contents?
Yes. There's plenty of discussion elsewhere in this thread which explains it.
Says nanny. Sorry Steve. I need computer / OS combo to serve my needs. Not to admire. In my opinion with all their flaws Windows fares better and is more versatile for what I do. And Linux runs my business.
Microsoft is a company that says 'yes' to every feature request with no regard for how it comes together as a whole. "Everything and the kitchen sink" is not a bug, it is their MO. They don't shy away from it.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dR8SAFRBmcU
https://www.theverge.com/2024/4/11/24127497/microsoft-window...
Ok, I've installed that, and there's no way I can update to Windows 11, there's no TPM chip.
Go back to Windows Update, the prompt is still there, it has no connection to the fact that my laptop cannot physically update to Win11 nor does it know I've run the PC Health Check app multiple times.
Like, seriously? Stop wasting my screen real-estate with an ad for a product that cannot be used on the device. Hitting X makes it go away until my next reboot.
With gaming on Linux finally becoming fairly mainstream I just cannot justify using windows anymore. There’s literally no reason to use a Microsoft product in 2024.
But, to be clear, I’ve not willingly used Windows since 2008.
It suffers about the same amount from my setup of dual monitors (as winten and linux) but one is 4k DP and the other FHD HDMI and the hilarity from display scaling (or DPI scaling or whatever), but other than those two thorns i haven't had any issues, and i abuse my computer. my list of available soundcards has a scroll bar on it, for instance. I read, game, and do ML inference on it whenever i use it, and it's been solid.
However, i paid next to nothing for 3 win 11 pro licenses, so my opinion is a bit biased. if i had paid $750 for those licenses (or whatever it costs, it's a free download, michael, how much could it possibly cost) i'd probably have a different opinion about the thorns i experience.
I used to run windows in a qemu VM with GPU and USB passthrough, on gentoo. I'm very used to thorns in computing.
amd 5950x, 128GB mem, nv 3090 gpu, 20TB (16+1+1+1+1 spindle/ssd).
The question is -- will IT workers and professionals in the industry be able to grow a spine and say "enough is enough?"
It's, of course, more about their atrocious security practices, but this should really be a good kick in the pants about the whole thing.
I'm more worried about these practices infesting the next round of software, currently on track to be AI tools. Microsoft's behavior needs to be a cautionary example of why open source alternatives and variety generally are so important, and we need to reject regulations and corporate maneuvering that would prevent real variety in whatever is next. Companies like microsoft have learned their lesson about not taking open source seriously and not locking in their customers enough, and they are working hard to fix their mistakes for the next time around.
And yet Windows has 46% usage for commercial developers and 60% for personal use, according to the stack overflow 2023 survey.
About 70% total market share of desktop OS’s and 20% of servers.
If you ever find yourself thinking that people don’t use Windows, you are in a bubble.
Reasonable to infer OP meant -- "In a world where a significant number of people meaningfully knew that Windows/Mac aren't the only game in town"
For example, just recently I expanded the supported OS list from just Ubuntu to many others:
https://github.com/getredash/setup/?tab=readme-ov-file#teste...
We've also rebuilt our Docker images to use Debian and Alpine as the base (there are a few different images), and coming up we'll probably change our baseline development platform from Ubuntu to Debian or similar (TBD).
When that's complete, Ubuntu will be just one choice among many for our users, rather than the only supported choice.
Its declarative nature is so much easier to work with, and doing the tmpfs as root trick makes it more fun to experiment with the knowledge that you won’t break anything that can’t be fixed with a reboot.
I would really like to get my T9 MacBook on Nixos but I have had a lot of issues when I attempted that, and suspend is still broken.
It confuses me because how is that different or better than pacman -S or apt install or emerge -va? Especially portage?!
Most of the time, though, with Nix, you don’t install stuff that way. In Nixos, there’s a configuration.nix file, and you add the package you want to to that file (along with all the other system configs). Then you effectively “rebuild” the OS based on that configuration, and a snapshot is created. Since this configuration is just text, it can be version controlled and backed up to GitHub or something.
If your hard drive crashes or something, you can reinstall Nixos from the config in like fifteen minutes.
If you just need the program temporarily, you can do “nix-shell -p neovim”, which will create a temporary shell where neon can be executed. Once you exit the shell, the binary is unlinked and will be eventually garbage collected.
There’s more, but the tl;dr is that can make stuff a lot more declarative while also allowing for stuff to be more ephemeral.
Just Say No.
Windows leadership recently changed for the better. Hopefully these misguided ads are a vestige of the outgoing leader, who previously lead consumer advertising, but has now been pushed out. Microsoft has a once-in-a-generation opportunity with Arm laptops based on Qualcomm/Nuvia (ex-Apple), this is not the time to squander that opportunity with distractions like advertising.
https://www.theverge.com/2024/3/28/24114362/microsoft-window...
"Yes we love the ads" said no user ever.
If they had any intention of listening to user feedback they never would have started this project because the feedback is obviously going to be negative.
At the very "best" they will cherry-pick a few metrics that show that it is a "popular addition".
Most likely human who started the project:
This environment gives a strong incentive toward ads-based business model for the Windows division. There likely is an army of PM desperately looking for new growth opportunities and decided to put ads everywhere since this is a so obvious strategy with low risk, high ROI. Changing a single or two senior leadership can help reversing this trends, but it's not sufficient.
Windows have ads since Windows 10, 9 years ago. There was several leadership changes on Windows in those 9 years. And the ads continued every single leadership.
The reason these ads exists, it's because Microsoft can't profit anymore on Windows itself (they don't sell updates), they don't have a store with enough users/dev to monetize on it, and they don't sell enough hardware like apple to profit from it as well.
So there's only two things left for them: ads or subscription
Btw, this "ad" actually already existed on Windows 10.
Do you not see a difference between sponsored results in Google search that came via paid ads and the rest of the top results that came via their own algorithm?
Why does The Verge and Engadget call them “effectively ads”? What do you know that they don’t know?
https://www.neowin.net/news/microsoft-blocks-even-more-custo...
They do have some legitimate reason to want to block specific versions of those apps if they cause stability issues on a new build of Windows, but at least in the case of StartAllBack the developer noted it isn't targeted at a specific version this time, it's a wildcard block.
https://twitter.com/StartIsBack/status/1776555154701205877
These apps broke and started crashing because they were updating the start menu. Probably related to the addition of ads.
Then they blocked these versions because they were crashing.
It doesn't seem like they are making any effort to block versions that don't cause crashes. (Other than maybe making it a bit harder to keep updating to new internal APIs)
It really doesn't seem like they are purposely breaking these tools so that more people see the ads. It is probably such a tiny market that they don't care at this point. They'll definitely ship the ads to 99.9% of users first before they worry about this unaddressed market.
See the Tweet I linked, Windows does have a mechanism to only block a specific range of version numbers that are known to cause issues, and they have used that on StartIsBack/StartAllBack before, but the most recent Windows build simply blocks StartAllBack*.exe without any bounds on the version.
The developer can get around the block by changing the filenames of course but that's not really the point, if Microsoft is being actively hostile towards this kind of customisation now then they're just going to keep breaking it on purpose.
Normally something like this should be ended with a </sarcasm> tag but I'm fairly sure this is soon to be - if not already - more fact than fiction.
The solution? Ditch Windows. The pot is boiling, the frog has long since passed so bury it and move to greener pastures (no, not those used in the XP background). There is a Linux waiting for you, somewhere - take your pick and run with it.
I’ve recently installed Win11 on my new computer, and immediately discovered Microsoft decided to implement keyboard lag in that version. Luckily, that “animation effects” checkbox did the trick for me.
Debian is perpetually 1-2 years behind.
Debian Stable keeps everything stable, and something I want a newer version of (say, the latest version of some browser, for developing with a new feature), I just install separately. Everything else is very low drama.
but now linux works like magic. i upgraded 3rd laptop in 3 years. just moved my nvme and all worked, even kernel and drivers in place upgrades.
i used dell and msi laptops. i was shocked that it works well on few month old released msi laptop. dell had touch screen, and it was working too.
I find I can disable this "Get X software" type search result when I right click the start menu icon, Configure App Launcher, click Configue enabled Seach plugins, and then disable Software Center.
Linux has gotten pretty friendly, even on a distro less focused on home users and features. I don't foresee installing Windows for myself again.
Asking because there might be reasonable options for getting it functional again without too much hassle. :)
They keyboard/trackpad panel is alcantara, and is glued to the bottom cover (or was until the batteries swelled). I had to cut and pry this later off. But even then, the connector for the battery requires you to remove basically all the components (speakers, heatsinks, fans, wifi card, a bunch of RF shielding that is micro-spot welded in place, the display, the motherboard. The battery connector is a pad that the back of the motherboard has contacts that mate to it.
I told my in-laws that there was a better than even chance that I'd destroy it while doing the repair, and I'd give it a shot, but they should be prepared to buy a new one. They were ready to go buy one instead of me doing the repair, but I told them I was happy to do it and went ahead and was able to get'r'done.
I guess some of that is the price of it being so thin and light. My MIL got it because she's kind of frail and wanted something super light. Which it definitely is. It's a marvel of engineering. But, ultimately, disposable.
I just swapped to a MacBook for $job and my last Windows 10 VM will be gone as soon as I finish migrating from Lightroom to DigiKam, maybe in a week or two. Everything else has been moved to Fedora Kinoite, including the kids gaming computer and the wife's workstation.
ChromeOS Flex might fit the bill though, and the installation process is probably the most straightforward and handhold-y out of the Linuxes. https://chromeenterprise.google/intl/en_uk/os/chromeosflex/
For a lot of home users, a "the browser is the new OS." If they're doing everything with cloud apps, then they really don't need to interact with a conventional desktop very much. Assuming they don't run Windows software such as games.
Battery life is no different than it was with Windows.
Linux mode was easy to set up, and hard for me to damage. ;-) And it doesn't seem to do anything to the Chrome OS machine, so you can wipe it and start over without re-installing the entire machine. Jupyter Notebook runs just fine, so I'm pretty much all set. Jupyter is practically my OS these days.
It seems targetted towards users in the right kind of way: https://kubuntu.org/feature-tour/
I have installed various flavors of Linux on various laptops over the years, and 100% of the time there were tough-to-diagnose issues with hardware components. With one laptop, the brightness level could not be changed. With another, installing Linux caused the battery to drain three times as fast and hibernation didn’t work properly. With another, I accidentally played music so loud that the speakers broke.
These are all things that I was able to figure out using my Google skills and general knowledge of Linux, but it is not an experience I’d recommend for a “regular person.”
I did specifically buy it around peripherals that I knew were officially Linux supported, but the install on it was extremely painless. That laptop was a piece of shit that literally started disintegrating, but Linux was certainly not to blame there.
I do wish Linux distros had some kind of "guaranteed hardware" support, where if you buy exactly the right components, it'll be a totally seamless experience
Frame.work: https://frame.work/
Dell: https://www.dell.com/support/kbdoc/en-us/000138246/linux-on-...
System76: https://system76.com/laptops
Kubuntu Focus: https://kfocus.org/land/business
I am sure there are more, this is only what I have found in less than 5 minutes of searching.
2. Dell supports an Ubuntu that was released in March 2023.
3. "on my Lemur Pro 10, the touchpad didn't work on Linux Mint out of the box."
4. Works perfectly on "Kubuntu," which... is great! Vertical integration!
Not disagreeing, but I think one of the major defining factors behind this is that most OEMs specifically design their hardware and drivers to work with Windows first. If they did the same for Linux instead, suddenly Linux would start to work with everything. Because having each individual piece of hardware support Linux has a much higher success rate than hoping an incomplete sweep over the available hardware by Linux will have covered everything that makes up a particular machine
i used linux on high end dell and msi laptopx not problem with battery.
linux really works way better now it did 6+ years ago, erased my trauma all my 4 attemps for years to use it.
https://linuxmint.com/
The front page is a soup of meaningless babble. The installation guide is in programmers documentation style and split over 15 pages.
Literally the same amount of effort and level of complexity as installing Windows.
I understand as a software person it's hard to have a generous perspective when trying to distinguish between "confusing only for the hopelessly computer illiterate" and "potentially confusing for regular computer users", but we should try to err toward giving people the benefit of the doubt.
If that's incomprehensible to someone, then they're probably not going to be installing any operating system by themselves, Linux, Windows, or otherwise.
But to answer, my go to is either xubuntu or lubuntu for windows users, and kubuntu or mint for everyone else. Xubuntu first and lubuntu if for some reason Xubuntu wants to play stupid games (such as on elitedesks). There is some personal preference as to what makes a good "landing page", i think xubuntu's is a little better but they're both good (x and l ubuntus). Compare that to windows.com landing page, to contrast.
But your average windows user isn't googling "which linux should i get" because generally they've never heard of or do not understand what "linux" is. they're googling "how do i fix windows" - and getting back "how to fix drafty windows" from a search engine powered by linux. It takes evangelizing, and sometimes straight chaotic good "i'll fix your PC" and installing linux on it. There goes 99.5% of all "normal" user problems!
I've been using the *nix and linux since the mid 90s, and i still don't recommend anyone try it unless they're willing to sit on their PC and learn things. Sorry, not sorry. For the facebook/gmail/cnn/twitter browsers of the world, the three i listed above are just fine.
edited to add: it's a pity that WUBI is no more (last i knew, at least) - that would be how i would evangelize it for people that had mostly empty windows machines just for browsing the web and maybe some cute games (samegame for instance).
[0] https://support.system76.com/articles/install-pop/
https://zorin.com/os/
I haven’t used Windows in any serious capacity in about 15 years, swapping between macOS and Linux every couple years, and I am glad to not have any of my workflow based around Windows now, because I don’t want ads to be blasted in my face.
Once my current Mac breaks, I am probably going to go back to Nixos, but never Windows.
Edit:
Appears I was wrong. I have never noticed the ads but people are pointing out they are plastered around a lot, at least in some capacity. I don’t like that either. Maybe I should move over to Linux sooner than I thought, at least on my laptop.
No. I reinstalled a new OS when Ubuntu started putting text "suggestions" in my terminal, and ads are much more nefarious in term of resource consumption and attention whoring. The only reason i got through the hoops of installing a Fdroid was the google app store ads.
If you pay for it you are the customer. If free, you are the product being sold.
New saying Pay up and don't complain about the ads.
With a Windows Enterprise license, all of the ads can be turned off, or at least that was the practice.
In case of television, people pay for it and they are "the product" as well. In case of Free Software, it's free, and the users are not sold at all.
And if you/we object, we will be told that our desire for living ad-free is as absurd as our desire for privacy.