NixOS and Guix are in some areas about a decade ahead of Mac and Windows. It's incredible what you can do with those (I can't work on new projects without guix shell anymore). It almost has the same feeling that in the 90s, when distros had package managers and proprietary OSes did not.
I am going to try to ELI5, but the concepts run very deep.
Both nixOS and Guix are different to 'regular' distros in the way that they are declarative: there is a file that describes the full OS: every user, every package, every system service, where the bootloader goes and so on. The main idea is that you can take that file, nuke your hard disk, reuse it and you'll have the same OS byte by byte. This concept of reproducibility is not only very comfortable, but has profound ramifications in security (you know no compiler or library has been tampered with malware) or science.
But it goes deeper:
Since the OS is described by a single file you can roll back to a previous version if your file is hosted on git (both OS manage this transparently without the need of a VCS). Users can have their own 'local copy' of that file with their own programs, including their own libraries with different versions. You can have different files as 'profiles' (one for work, one for personal projects, one for gaming) you can activate at any time when you want to switch tasks, or you can try your friend configuration on a chroot or isolated environment on top of your own system.
The main difference between nixOS and Guix is that guix uses guile scheme as configuration language for that particular file. I have plenty of '(packages (if is-laptop acpi)...)' entry on my own files.
guix shell is just a way to create a temporary environment to try something quick without polluting my OS. For instance, if I want to do some hacking on python2 I would do 'guix shell python2' and it will open a shell for me with python2 without changing my python3 binary and python3 libraries on my main system.
BTW you don't even have to change your whole system, both nix and guix can be installed on top of 'regular' distros (google 'guix foreign distro', which is the way I manage my rasperry pis).
There is way more than all that, I definitely encourage everyone to give it a try, it's a mind bending new way to use a OS.
>This concept of reproducibility is not only very comfortable, but has profound ramifications in security (you know no compiler or library has been tampered with malware)
If you want to "profoundly" improve security, you verify the whole install against a cryptographic hash on every boot, and you refuse to boot if the verification fails, and you keep the hashes in tamper-proof hardware -- like Android and ChromeOS do, but no other Linux distro does except for a distro specialized for cloud servers called Bottlerocket that is poor in resources (e.g., attention from developers).
NixOS's security is pretty poor even compared to the low standard of popular Linux distros because although it does incorporate one very good idea (and it is not reproducibility -- its refraining from giving packages as much ambient authority most OSes give them), security is mostly about paying attention to dozens of boring details, which the NixOS project does not care about as much as for example Fedora does. E.g., here is the project not caring about supply chain integrity: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36268776.
Another example: if you install Google Chrome onto Fedora the standard way (namely, dnf install google-chrome-stable) it points your Fedora install to an RPM repo hosted by Google, so that from then on, even if everyone in charge of the Fedora servers lost their minds, your Fedora install would continue to keep your browser up-to-date in a very timely manner (because it has been configured to look directly to Google's servers for updates, and Google's Chrome team is well-paid and has a stellar reputation for security and in particular for timely delivery of security updates). In contrast, when I installed NixOS's Chrome package, it arranged things so that every time I updated my NixOS install (using nixos-rebuild IIRC) it would look to NixOS's servers, so the security of my browser (and the browser is the source of many, many security vulnerabilities) depends on a NixOS maintainer getting the update from Google, then providing it to me. But you see, the Fedora way of handling that package has a single point of failure (namely, Google) whereas the way NixOS chose has two points (namely, Google and a NixOS maintainer who is probably a volunteer and might quit or die at any time -- and the NixOS project has not system in place to respond to that event in a timely manner if my experience with the NixOS project is any indication).
NixOS's machinery for updating packages is very flexible, so I'm sure it would've been pretty easy to arrange for NixOS's Chrome package to work the way Fedora's does, but the relevant decision maker at NixOS simply didn't think of it. But security consists in large part in paying attention to details like that. ADDED. Actually, now that I think of it, the Chrome project's servers provide only RPMs and DEBs, so for NixOS's maintainer of the Chrome package to handle updates to Chrome the way Fedora does would require that the installation of the Chrome package causes (as part of dependency satisfaction) the installation of RPM or dpkg and maybe parts of dnf or apt (so that later on, the nixos-rebuild command can look for updates on Google's servers), so it is not as easy as I was envisioning when I wrote that "it would've been pretty easy". (Still, that is probably how I would do if I were the NixOS maintainer.)
you are right and thanks for adding on my ELI5. TBH I never used nixOS, only guix, which does not use a central key to sign packages, and uses signed commits (https://guix.gnu.org/manual/en/html_node/Commit-Access.html) , the project is sponsored by the FSF and it's the official distro for the GNU project, so they take security very seriously. (You can always install a random channel and throw all that out of the window if you want).
(quick edit) Guix packages are basically .scm (scheme) files on git, so the fedora/nix example does not apply either. Every file can be opened and inspected, most of them are basically a git clone + checking a hash. You can decide to use substitutes (binaries) or no, and substitutes are usually similar byte by byte across systems. As an example, this is the guix config for installing CRIU: https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/guix.git/tree/gnu/packages...
Given said that, I am ready to spend some of my funemployment time installing and using nix as my daily driver for a few months, so I will have more info and first hand knowledge of all that.
About the first time there was some hidden Registry value jacking up my life, Windows made me feel like the product, instead of Microsoft's OS or application.
Open Source isn't challenge-free, but it's much closer to the chess experience that I seek than the poker experience of proprietary alternatives.
It's pretty sad, but with each iteration of Windows, it feels more and more impersonal and intrusive. There could be a mass migration to MacOS and Linux for many of us.
MacOS is going through the same thing. It’s not nearly as bad, but Apple keeps pushing their services and being more in your face about it.
I don’t mind them trying. But don’t keep asking, or ask again on every update, or badge settings because I haven’t my added to my wallet, or keep telling me how much better a family plan is when I’m single. It’s not better, it’s a waste of money.
I can’t imagine switching off macOS/iOS. I don’t want Linux or Windows. But I’m getting less happy every year.
MacOS is getting worse, for sure, but compared to Windows, it's way "behind" in all the bad ways. As a life-long Windows user, who is also comfortable with Linux, MacOS seems to have the best of all worlds, currently.
I bought my first Windows computer in about 20 years a few months ago. It’s got 11 on it.
It's an insanely tiny very low power thing that was almost as cheap as I could get. I just needed a Windows PC around and it fit my needs. Totally fine for basic stuff.
But wow. I’ve seen articles about how it was getting worse, new things MS has done, pulled back on, and put in later.
I was used to all the stupid advertisement stickers that have been there forever. Bing desktop images I’ve seen before and is a nice default IMO.
But the big ads in the start menu? And the thing of the day on the search bar? Candy Crush and other crap? CONSTANT OneDrive and Office 365 nagging? Are you sure you didn’t mean Edge this time? Really?
I’d heard of it all but it’s so comically over the top in person. And takes a while to find out how to disable.
My last personal PC was XP Pro in the early 2000s. I’ve used a number of work PCs with newer versions but they were all locked down with group policy so none of that appeared.
Windows is a self parody at this point. I know it’s a very good OS technically. But wow they found out how to ruin it.
Thank you for sharing your story. I'd like to add that it's very much possible to disable many of these annoying things. But doing so: 1) requires some research 2) can cause your system to become unstable (e.g. if you run a script that tweaks many settings in the registry) 3) those settings may get reset with a major Windows update 4) you hardly need to do this on MacOS. Myself, I have my ways of dealing with all of these things. But it feels like an uphill battle.
There were system settings for the start menu things and the search bar. All the preloaded crud like Candy Crush, which I got the impression was more of a placeholder(?), was removed easily enough through the add/remove software panel. There was a preference somewhere to get Edge to shut up too.
I think I might’ve had to Google something to find one setting. None of it was really too bad. It’s just a bunch of wasted time that I shouldn’t have had to deal with.
And it feels like the OneDrive pop-up comes back every once in a while after a system update. But that’s easily dismissed too.
Nothing came from my OEM, it was just a bog standard Windows install. All the junk comes with windows. As the user, none of this was for me.
I view some of the stuff Apple does as an attempt to help me by selling me something, though not all of it. I don’t want it to happen. It’s annoying. But it somehow feels more appropriate than what Windows does.
That's a fair point. I just find that Windows is far more aggressive in throwing their latest feature or "desired user behavior" (example #2 below) in your face. Examples include:
* Cortana. Nobody should have been forced to use a modern version of Clippy, but at the OS level, and one named after a video game (AI) character. It made the whole OS feel like a joke - to me, at least.
* Tricking/forcing people to sign in with Microsoft/Outlook credentials, so their Windows account would now be tied to MS online credentials.
* Tricking/forcing users to upgrade into Windows 10. This happened to countless people, including to someone in my family.
I left the MS Windows ecosystem in around 2001, did not really use XP or 7. I was on various linux distros until 2015- and for my needs at the time they were great! I used mostly desktops (power management/sleep not a big issue) and did not have to interop with "regular" users using MS Office, etc. I did some development, and in this area Linux excelled. I also had time to tweak and twiddle until things worked well.
2015 - 2021 I was on Mac OS. It was an improvement over Linux in several ways- mobile HW was great, sleep no problem, and I could interoperate. MacOS is great in so many ways (and as mentioned Apple HW is generally top-notch), but not perfect. For example, they don't really want you running "unapproved" (unsigned) software, and I understand network is needed to check if the software is approved: https://appleinsider.com/inside/macos/tips/how-to-launch-any... . Together with the fact that I had very little HW control (can't upgrade or replace parts myself on Macbooks especially) and that Apple make their stuff software pretty "sticky" (hard to get your data out) I ended my run using MacOS as my primary computer.
So now I am on MS Windows again, like the old days. It has the issues indicated in the article for sure- but I do feel a little more control than MacOS, strangely. Its easy, it mostly works and gets out of the way, and I can still upgrade RAM etc (for now, anyway- ARM PCs might be more like current MacBooks and could change this). Dev is better than in the past, and interop is no problem. The main reason I am on Windows is backward comparability. As I have aged, I value being able to use old things- and on this MS Windows is unmatched in my experience. I will see how long I last before the next leap ;-)
I agree with all the points you made. Windows is very open in many ways - at least relative to MacOS. In my main laptop, I have 2 SSD slots and the memory is also swappable. Not to mention what's possible with something like the Framework laptops.
Meanwhile, Linux may be far more open, but a lot of hardware might not work at 100% feature parity (e.g. various peripherals, especially anything bluetooth).
It's also true that the interop situation has gotten far better on Windows. WSL works very well. But I'd also say that all 3 main OSs have much better interop than in the past. For example, gaming on Linux is more than viable, thanks to Valve. Finally, The Browser has become an OS of its own. And Electron-based apps like VSCode, Discord, and many others, are multiplatform.
Personally, I find all the 3 of the main OSs to be very compelling and impressive. They each have their own set of pros and cons. For someone who just wants things to work, MacOS is a great choice - but one that feels quite limiting (but some people feel a sense of freedom in that, actually). Windows also works very well in that regard. It's just that for many, it feels like Microsoft is treating us Windows-folk as dumb cattle and that they are taking our loyalty for granted. Meanwhile, Linux.. is hard to define. It's a lot of things and it's a constantly moving target. For me, I have found Linux on the desktop to have the most pain points. Not ones that I cannot manage or work around, but ones I'd rather not have to deal with.
I don't see myself moving away from Windows due to the software ecosystem that has been built upon it for decades, but if I was forced to use the "Home" version I would be long gone. That being said, when I can, I use Linux on various PCs and it's a refreshing experience.
I run exclusively Linux, don't even really feel the need to keep a dual boot partition around, and have probably installed Arch Linux over 50 times, but I do understand that there are many a plethora of different Windows software ecosystems that aren't duplicated in Linux. I'm a firm believer in if there is a will there is way, but sometimes I've had to walk away and either say F this or break out the Window's partition. Luckily I don't "need" Adobe products, or perfect support for some of my hardware devices, or the exact right libraries for that kinda obscure game, or 99 other things. Linux is probably good for a vast majority of us though.
I am chained to Windows (not the OP) all over the place.
CAD programs, e.g. SolidWorks, Alibre, SketchUp, eDrawings, Fusion 360? Windows.
CAM programs, e.g. BobCAM, MeshCAM, MasterCAM? Windows.
Office? Windows (LibreOffice is not a functional replacement - you can’t risk having documents being sent to clients looking bad).
FileMaker, Act! Pro, other desktop databases? Windows.
Router control software, e.g. Mach3, Mach4, UCCNC? Windows.
Adobe anything (GIMP is worse than a joke)? Or, if you don’t like Adobe, Affinity? Windows.
No shortage of Windows and Mac only programs in a business. Other than MasterCAM, my family uses or has used every piece of software I just listed in our small business. Linux is not an option; only for home hobbyist use, maybe. If you could get by with a Chromebook, Linux will work for you, otherwise it probably won’t. (This might sound like a slam, but remember Steam also runs on Chromebooks now.)
I have a barebones 'just installed' win10 image that I use to clone a new VM for each new app I add. Solidworks, NX, Cadence, Altium and ISE all work fine with no problems because of 3d acceleration or such.
Admitably my impetus for this was conflicting FlexLM emulators cough, but there's no reason it can't work just as a way of keeping things organised and clean on a host OS that isn't windows.
Emphatically, no. Running CAM, or CAD software, in a VM, is almost unusably slow with any large models. I’ve tried. It’s not fun to zoom through a large model at 5 FPS. You need to have GPU passthrough, and even though you can make that work, it’s very risky (hardly a stable sane thing to build a business on), and you’re just running Windows again, but worse. We need GPUs in Windows already (primarily NVIDIA) just to keep the CAD from being too slow, and to keep our rendering options open.
Even if it worked brilliantly in a VM (which it doesn’t), why would I double my operating systems and run them simultaneously? That’s just begging for compatibility issues, frustration, and defeats the point of avoiding Windows entirely. Any benefits for avoiding Windows are almost completely negated.
CAD is exactly what I'm using VMs with GPU passthrough for, and it's working briliantly there. The advantage is that most of these VMs have no internet access at all (they only see a single SMB share on the host) - so most of the security and privacy issues are just non-existent.
You can with a tremendous amount of effort create a brittle config that will run some of that software acceptably, especially if you're sailing the high seas. In a real world situation it's an absolute no-go.
Wine won't work with a lot of the enterprisy stuff that also requires license servers, etc.
Besides the design stuff, the entire manufacturing industry is dependent on Microsoft. There are thousands -- probably hundreds of thousands -- of air-gapped NT4 machines in factories running very specific but unsupported for 20 years software, for example. All the big MES systems, test software, and various tooling to run factories are all designed for Windows only.
Thanks for the answer! I have a follow up question, if you don't mind...
> Office? Windows (LibreOffice is not a functional replacement - you can’t risk having documents being sent to clients looking bad).
What kind of documents are you sending to clients? In my experience I would only share PDFs 99% of the time. So is your concern that the PDF will look unprofessional or that you need to send .docx or .xlsx or .pptx files to clients?
I was about 25 years into my career when I started a new job and the desktop was running windows. I explained I had never really used it and they would need to let me run Linux.
Windows is just plain humiliating and embarrassing to use at this point. MacOS is starting to creep that way with lots of pushing for signing up for additional services, as well. It’s a real shame, but it’s no wonder no one wants to deal with a PC anymore outside of the office where most of the trash is turned off by corporate IT.
I don't think that's the right causal direction. People aren't using home PCs anymore because they use their phones, or their work laptop. At least that's my take.
Part of me wonders if all this advertisement and service hawking is related to a fear of massive market size reduction, overall.
Do you want to give this app access to downloads? To desktop? To microphone? What about this app? Sign in to iCloud. Sign in again. Maybe this time? Nope, sign in to iCloud.
I’ve picked my poison, and it’s Apple, but it’s far from perfect.
Microsoft care quite a bit because security vulnerabilities of end user machines that were out of date was a huge issue. Since they basically stopped allowing users to run outdated versions, that problem has effectively disappeared.
So it was necessary to destroy the product in order to save its users. Got it.
Suggest reading up on the history of personal computing, and then ask yourself if this is how it was supposed to go. At this point, even Mac and Linux users are starting to feel the loving embrace of their OS vendors' paternalism.
As soon as computers are on a network that changes things. A compromised machine is a danger to others.
I don't think you want to go there, broheim. Wait'll you hear my opinion of how "safe" your computer is, and whether it should be allowed on a network.
I fail to see how an updated OS is a destroyed product.
A personal computer, along with its operating system, should do what its owner tells it to do.
What is the alternative to the access problem? Would you prefer apps be able to access that stuff without permission? I get it’s annoying but at least it’s safe?
I don’t have a perfect solution, but I also don’t have billions in the bank and lots of employees tasked to the issue.
One popup with a list of apps and their permissions would at least be a one stop shop, but even that wouldn’t be great on a new machine setup as your apps aren’t all there yet.
I think it will ask, but it’s optional. You can do it later if you’d prefer.
The only time it’s mandatory is if you are restoring from a back up or transferring from another computer with a newer operating system.
So if your old machine was on 10.20.1 but your new machine is 10.19.4 because that was the newest when it was put in box then you’ll have to update it first.
I just got a new MacBook Air a couple of days ago, and a couple weeks before that I helped my mom set up a new Win 11 laptop.
The Macbook's setup is definitely a bit faster than Windows, but it's not way faster. I still had to turn off a lot of the things it suggests, and I still was prompted to update the OS. However, the Macbook was less pushy and I felt the features at least seemed to offer some user value.
I am exclusively a Linux user (mobile and desktop) but I gotta be fair: if updates upon installation are the main complaint...
Pretty sure some vendors update phones in the store to avoid bothering the customer with it. Seems like a lot of effort to boot the full inventory's amount of phones every time there's a security patch only so people don't have to download a diff on first launch (edit: found it https://www.macrumors.com/2024/03/27/what-new-machine-to-upd...)
Just a regular Samsung (S10e because it has a headphone jack; bought second hand to reduce e-waste), running Debian in userspace on the stock kernel because I didn't want to give up things like the camera 960fps slow motion feature. I like open source but I also like practical usability ^^'
The Debian "app" gives me access to apt and anything that has an ARM build, which is nearly everything. Sometimes I write code on it, like a PoC to brute force a numeric parking lot voucher was the most recent instance, but most commonly I use qalc (best calculator ever, also use it on desktop) and sshd to remotely access photos/Screenshots. It used to be more featureful and you could run things like wavemon and aircrack, but selinux restrictions have made that a thing of the past. Surely it's possible to adjust, but I haven't invested the time in finding out how yet
Win11 install was v.slow, much slower than Pop_OS!, say, and infinitely more annoying. And each user (on Home edition) that logs in has to be configured ... "we're still going to advertise to you, you may as well let us spy on you so you get adverts you'll like" ... sheesh.
You're immediately hit with apps you can't uninstall (Edge) too.
Fwiw, CS2 ran away smoother for me on Kubuntu than it does on Win11 (same hardware). I wasn't expecting that.
About a year ago I dumped Windows from my personal PC for good. I ran a Linux desktop at work for a decade, but my Steam collection get me with at least a bit of a tether to Microsoft. But Valve finally made Linux gaming a reality. I hope more people can make the switch someday because I'm quite happy with the system (Pop!_OS is my distro of choice these days).
I did this about three months ago in response to Windows insisting again that I must link my desktop user with my Live account. I'm blown away by how viable Linux gaming is now, entirely because of money dumped in by Valve. It's only looking better, too, the deck means people are motivated to at least make sure it boots in Wine, and if they support Vulkan the perf will likely work out well.
I installed Windows for a media PC for the first time in many years, and holy shit it’s insane. The dark patterns. The nags. It’s a given they are somehow tracking everything I do and selling all of my files. They are milking boomers who will never switch from Windows as a cash cow, longterm they know Windows is dead as a personal desktop. Their revenue is no longer dependent on Windows PC so it’s an end game scenario.
That's what finally gave me the confidence to switch to Linux a year ago. I'm running Manjaro on my main system and Valve's efforts in improving WINE/creating Proton have been fantastic. The amount of games that "just work" has been nothing short of amazing.
I also moved over to PopOS over a year ago and have been quite happy with the end result. Between Steam and Lutris I’ve been able to run everything I want to, and I don’t have to play whack-a-mole with Microsoft’s “features” that I’m not interested in.
Bonus points: I’m having fun with my computer again!
I think Proton is a great project (and CodeWeavers deserve credit there as well), but why does it have to be a choice?
I have been multi booting for 20 years, preferring Linux distributions the whole time, but other OSes when I want to use them.
I recently started using a dedicated Windows system for gaming and other Windows favored tasks. I am running a KVM switch, using AMD Graphics on a Linux system and Nvidia on this Windows system. I also have a macOS system, that I use as needed.
I do this with mobile devices as well. It doesn't seem worth it to squabble over choosing a path.
I don't know if I'd say its a choice between a squabble or no squabble, its just a different set of squabbles.
For me, there are evenings when I am hacking away on a hobby project for 2 or 3 hours. Then suddenly just go, 'I wanna just veg out for another 2 hours then go to bed.' When I'm in that mood, I don't even want to be bothered changing machines. Just hit the steam icon and veg. Thats also bout the only time I end up gaming though, haha.
Last time I dual booted though, I remember why I didn't for along time. Did a Windows update, windows rebooted my computer and it did something with grub and I couldn't easily boot into linux anymore.
It was my experience as well. For the longest time, I had dual boot with a thought that I will switch between OSs as needed ( and as a back up if things break down ), but that never really happened and I spent majority of time on Windows ( and games ). Eventually, I just realized VM works better for me.
Works better for me as well, plus it keeps windows in a nice little bundle that I can cut off from the network at will, it’s really nice with a dedicated GPU to play games as well with pass thru
Holy mackerel, yes. Once I realized pass through can and does work, I never looked back. This is also why I dislike how nvidia seems to do everything in its power to make it as painful as possible for anything after 3060, but that is a separate rant.
Not everyone has multiple desktop computers at home, especially powerful ones. (With an Apple device to top it up.)
But hardware is more affordable than ever (unless you want a really powerful GPU). What's worse is that you have to separate the tasks between OSes, you can't easily have a default computer for everything, with everything relevant locally available. It's fine if you keep Windows for gaming, and want gaming to be explicitly separate. It's harder if you need Windows for graphics / video, or for CAD/CAM, or for Office. Having important related bits and software on another box may be a hassle.
If you're careful with how you handle the ESP and other shared drives on Linux's side, I found it reasonably ergonomic to suspend to disk, rather than hard shut down, when switching between OSes.
At least back when win10 was new, Proton is good enough that I haven't needed Windows in a good few years.
It's actually a pretty good thing to compartmentalize your computer. I use it to reduce procrastination.
Put all your fun things on one OS (or user account), and all your business stuff on another (possibly blocking distractions via hosts or firewall rules); and you've added a bunch of friction to switching from work to play. Not that it can't be done, but it needs to be a deliberate choice and you can't just bounce between them.
I've found that this only works in very specific circumstances. If you have any flexibility to your work schedule (which is a lot more common nowadays with any amount of remote work) this becomes massively inconvenient, as every small context switch means reseting your current system state (eg closing your dev tools).
I don't really have a set work schedule, so it's normal for me to jump between a work context and a play context. It's much easier to do by very rarely rebooting my computer (once or twice a month), so I can always pick up where I left off. The regularly scheduled update meetings do a good enough job of keeping procrastination in check.
Author said he was using KVM switch, hence multiple computers. Also you can't install macOS on a PC. Also you might need switching between OS in real time and often.
Just some thoughts.
This is very true, most of my rescues are older laptops that said were “broke”. I offered to help figure them out what was broke because I hate calling something obsolete when I can usually throw linux on it and bring it back to like. 2 of them just need an OS install, and 2 needed a new SSD. All the owners said “I was looking for an excuse to get a new laptop anyway” so I took them off their hands.
I was that dude, but I hate using Windows! Microsoft kept giving me more and more reasons to stop using Windows, on a silver platter lol. So now my gaming PC runs fedora, and all of my other computers are Macs.
Well as of a couple of years ago they have some of the most overpowered hardware. Its not the intel era anymore. The fact I can run many of these unsupported games on max settings through an emulation layer no less is saying something.
They made the Mac a compatibility nightmare with games, so it doesn't matter so much how fast the hardware is. And going from a 2009 Mac Pro with an RX580 to an M1 mini, every game was slower, especially csgo (before it became cs2).
And the fact that Apple didn't seem to care to cooperate much in terms of things like Metal etc. Mac would've been a much bigger ask compared to Linux, where they can usually just contribute to and work with any component that may need bug fixes or additional features.
Why? Arm macs run that software fine through emulation. The transition was an excuse to also drop support of x86 mac ports for companies that used to put these out as part of doing business. I run mac ports of x86 games through rosetta. Max graphics. The only cap is a seemingly frame locked 40fps that I think rosetta has something to do with. Seems to me if that cap were lifted the fps would rocket considering how cool and quiet it was, and this is through emulation not a native arm port.
Photo editing is my last holdout. And a European-compatible banking software.
Everything else works well on Linux. Gaming included. I've run Linux many years, in fact.
But Capture One and Lightroom are not available over there, which is what draws me back to MacOS. Of course I could just use darktable. Have done that for several years. But at the end of the day, I just prefer Capture One, and that's enough reason for me to switch my OS.
Some european banks are still struggling with the whole internet concept and have win32 apps using emulated dial up for both home and business customers.
The few I had a pleasure of using have a really good browser and mobile app support. The only problem I ran into is that sometimes mobile apps refuse to run on rooted Android devices.
Raiffeisen in Austria is/was? one of the stragglers, but I haven't dealt with them in 2 years or so - a company I worked for was stuck with it, but I noped out for Erste Sparkasse ASAP, and they let you do everything in browser. (Since 2011 at least.)
Raiffeisen in Russia let one do everything in a browser on Linux since 2008 for personal accounts. Possibly earlier, I did not have an account with them back then. For business accounts, it's since February 2016.
A good, HBCI capable software that can list transactions and make transfers from and to multiple banks. Think Quicken or MoneyMoney.
The browser will only ever log in to one bank per tab, and with different UI per bank. If you have more than one bank, it becomes a hassle quite quickly.
My last version of Windows was 7. After that I used a MacBook for work for a few years, and I somewhat missed windows for gaming (but mainly used a PS4 during that time so I got by). Then, a few years ago, I switched exclusively to Linux (I’ve usually had a dual boot or a second machine running Linux, but it was rarely my exclusive OS), and haven’t looked back. I’ve since also got a Steam Deck which has completely replaced my PS4, while I also play a few games like Crusader Kings on my Linux laptop.
Gaming is what kept a lot of people on windows over the years, but thanks to valve and the proton team, Linux gaming works as well as Windows gaming (and some people say better than — I certainly don’t have to deal with all the crap Microsoft tries to put into windows).
Some people refuse to use Linux because they’re afraid of having to tinker with it, but that hasn’t been my experience in over a decade. Things have generally just worked for me.
Would not say that Linux gaming works as well as Windows gaming. Plenty of things won't work in Proton, at least not out of the box, and you're kinda restricted to AMD GPUs. That's fine cause I don't play video games anymore, but people who really care about that will put up with a lot of MS's BS.
AoE2:DE is one example of incompatibility. Simple game (by modern standards) with no advanced anticheat.
It's been a few months since I played but the only thing that doesn't work is Xbox login. I needed to download a DLL to get multiplayer working, which I agree isn't really userfriendly, but compared to the early Wine days Proton is a walk in the park.
What I do miss a bit is Capturage, apparently it's really hard to make it work in Proton.
There's nothing restricting you to AMD GPUs though? Proton works great on my 3090.
It's even been less troublesome than when I used to use AMD GPUs, where IIRC accelerated graphics drivers and the ROCm drivers had some sort of conflict unless installed a certain way (a few years ago now, my last AMD card was a 5700xt).
Skyrim doesn't work well at all either. I'm blown away that probably the most re-released game of all time never added Linux support. Even before MS took over.
There is no music or NPC dialogue. I spent a few hours scouring for all manner of fixes before giving up. So many "This is what fixed it for me:" that didn't work on my machine.
There were also some rendering issues, but I could let that slide given my GPU is ~10 years old.
I would need to check if it’s the DE or which, but I’ve played a good bit of AoE2 on Linux through proton about two years ago without any issues. It was whatever version was recommended by the AoE2 YouTubers, not sure if that was DE.
The only problems I’ve had are that the intro video and menu for supreme commander forged alliance runs at very low frame rate (but the actual game runs without problems), and that Gothic 3 was very glitchy on steam deck. Everything else I’ve tried ran without issue.
Thanks, but I stopped playing for unrelated reasons before that was posted. Previous fixes people posted involved inserting some different DLL, which didn't work for me. Not sure if I did something wrong or they were outdated in newer game versions.
Windows is such execrable trash now that, when my late-2014 25-inch 5K Intel iMac got orphaned, I didn't even consider putting Windows on it. Now it's running Mint, and I use my M1 MacBook Pro in clamshell mode connected to a monitor.
That monitor, incidentally, is a 25-inch former iMac. I gutted it after it suffered the widespread burned-out-GPU problem that afflicted many (most?) Macs of circa-2010 vintage, and put an LCD driver board in it.
I switched to Pop OS in 2018 because I was in college, and I wanted to spend less time gaming. Unfortunately for me, that was also the year Valve released Proton, and my gaming didn't (immediately) drop very much :>
For the past few years I've had this thought in the back of my head . If I use a Samba server as a domain controller, how much cruft and hostility can I shave off a standard Windows 11 Pro installation with GPOs. I keep kicking around the idea of trying to do it as an exercise in absurdity.
True, but I want to be able to join a computer to my domain and everything gets applied automatically.
The absurdity being the creation of an enterprise environment to use enterprise tools to shape a personal computer into something that closely resembles an experience you used to get out of the box 15 years ago.
To build a castle so as not to be treated like livestock.
I can't even remove 'Recommended' from the start menu, not even on a Pro for Workstations.
Every time I search on the start menu there is a web search, impossible to turn off. How is that acceptable?
I install Edge Beta to test something, and the I uninstall it. All of the sudden my search provider in my normal Edge is reset.
And the nagging everywhere. No I don't want 'back-up' my files (OneDrive is not backup, it's sync). And I don't want to be reminded later. I don't want to be reminded ever. All this fuzzy language makes me feel like I'm dealing with a kindergarden teacher addressing his/her pupils.
It's not my computer any more.
Oh, I update a driver. And 2 days later Windows installs an older version. Since when is 6.6.1.40 better than 6.6.1.72? Why would you do that?
For some consolation: Windows Autoupdates can be disabled and likewise driver installs in general via Group Policy, which is available if you use Pro or above.
But shouldn’t they inform you and let you opt out of the downgrade even if they know something?
Ubuntu at least asks if you want to proceed with a package update, you can look at the changelog to see what the update is about, and you can mark packages to be on hold and skipped for updates.
Windows updates can be disabled on any edition with my "I wasn't asking" approach of moving C:/Windows/system32/wua*.dll somewhere else. You can put these dlls back when and if you want to install updates.
This illustrates just how ridiculously screwed up Windows is now.
No one should have to resort to registry hacking or the many scripts or hacks available to regain control over basic UX, privacy, or usability selections. It is absolutely absurd.
To be fair, Linux configuration is not exactly straightforward in comparison to Windows. Dozens of obscure config files (each with a different syntax), stored in various random places in the filesystem, with the general expectation that every user should be able to run a terminal command once in a while to fix something.
Don't get me wrong, I'm a Linux lover and user, but from an outside perspective Windows registry (a central, structured database of configuration for everything) looks easier.
> Dozens of obscure config files (each with a different syntax), stored in various random places in the filesystem, with the general expectation that every user should be able to run a terminal command once in a while to fix something.
The good thing is that explanations is often a `man` command away, and the location of these files is often listed in the same place. Also general computing is an expert subject. You may as well have a kiosk if you start hiding away capabilities. The expectation to drop to a terminal is often because the terminal is the fastest way to get things done.
But with the terminal you still have to learn commands, it's not as discoverable as the windows 95 environment. There you could do things as a noob by just looking around and after a while you could do things without even thinking. Every windows version after that has broken that flow in some way. In Linux I keep forgetting what file to edit to get what I want. I need to look up location and syntax for most things every time I want to do something.
I like to describe the shell and commands as a big dashboard with many levers and indicators compared to a much simpler one with just a small bunch of ON-OFF switches. They're indeed complicated, until the day you need to change something that isn't on the simple panel, or isn't a simple ON-OFF choice, because every operating system is complicated; you can hide some of its complexity behind a graphical interface, but you always lose something in the process because you can easily have a command with 100 options but you can't put 100 buttons on a screen. It simply doesn't scale.
So the next question is "how do we put a complicated system under control of a simpler graphical interface?" We make assumptions of course (read: we write code that makes assumptions), and there is where bugs arise or more complexity is created, because machines (still) aren't good as humans at doing some things. As an example, very complex string operations can be performed using sed, awk and the usual shell command with regular expessions, where on Windows for years (I have no experience with its new shells) many people would have to load Office, import the text, write a macro, and export back the text. The difference being that Office would likely need two orders of magnitude more computing power, memory and storage.
> but you can't put 100 buttons on a screen. It simply doesn't scale.
You can scroll, use pages, tabs, nested menus, guided wizards, Chrome or VS code style searchable settings lists, buttons which appear or disappear dynamically when necessary.
> where on Windows for years (I have no experience with its new shells) many people would have to load Office, import the text, write a macro, and export back the text.
If you can assume office, why can’t you assume gvim or any other text editor with a gui? And why is text editing your yardstick? At least you can do that with a gui somehow, image processing you can’t do with a cli - yes you can write the code for ffmpeg or graphviz but you can’t see the result without a graphic interface.
I agree with you that an application needs discoverability. Like a text processor for a writer or a photo editing software for a photographer. It should make sense for a particular domain, requiring only minimal training for the medium. But we can't abstract away the notion of computers. An analogy is car. Driving a car only require a minimal interface. Racing with one, however, requires a lot more knowledge. Repairing a car is where knowing the internals is the minimum. Different needs, different levels of knowledge. Most people would be happy with the iPad if only the applications were a tad more useful (File sharing is aweful). But some people do "general computing" and graphical interfaces usually fail in some way or another (especially with automation).
While those configs are different in syntax, each is meant to be read, edited and backed up by a human. All of the system config files are in /etc
Registry hacking, with all it's resets and duplicate keys is hard to backup, constantly reverts ( because m$ doesn't believe it to be user editable) and is a pain in the ass to back up and restore.
Oh yes, and is your registry value supposed to be a dword, or something else? No way to tell.
I've been wondering if these magical registry things are documented anywhere... Searching, for example, "site:microsoft.com DisableSearchBoxSuggestions", only leads me to tons of forum posts.
I would love a configuration system with centralized database and centralized documentation, but no OS currently seems to be able to achieve that, and Windows' missing documentation appears even worse than obscure but documented config files.
With Linux you can configure it further to your taste. Which is not even necessary on most distributions for basic usage.
With Windows you have to patch it through the registry (which is not bsckupable config files) to remove ads and other annoying "features".
So the out-of-the-box experience is better with Linux. My mom even understands Linux GUIs better these days than Windows, it's just less bloat and distraction. And for basic apps you don't have to configure anything on the CLI. I recently got a Raspberry PI for my parents to use as a HTPC, installed some basic apps on it, and they can just use it like that.
Ones that come with third party software installed in places like /opt[1], ones that go with website folders like .htaccess, MySQL looks in $MYSQL_HOME/my.cnf and
[datadir]/my.cnf
I beg to differ, Linux is way more straightforward. Within each new Windows version they keep switching things around, adding layers upon layers and options within options within option that point back toward the initial options page, where you end up in a loop. The search function rarely finds the settings I want. Edge search results by default, including digital cancer such as Instagram, TikTok, et cetera, on the start menu by default.
Now too, for normal computer users who don't want to tweak their operating system and only need basic utilities, and are able to read and follow simple instructions, Linux has long become way more accessible than Windows.
I think there's always a pressure in balancing the ability for anyone to contribute to the software ecosystem with the convenience of a unified interface. Many people who like Apple's ecosystem seem to really want one extreme of this spectrum (A tightly-integrated ecosystem with design choices that standardize throughout - though this has not quite exactly been my experience with that ecosystem in practice), but there are grades of it everywhere. Mainstream linux distros increasingly favor centralized system services, like systemd or upstart, to manage several processes under a quasi-common hierarchy. Config files often get unified in /etc when a project becomes mature and integrated into a lot of distros, and there are conventions in how people write config files that are pretty straightforward in commonly used applications, but much less so in niche projects. Windows seems to be growing less customizable over time in an attempt to tighten its grip on its users, but of course even windows and macos seem to allow a bit more user control than mobile or game console operating systems. It's all degrees.
To be frank, I think the only battle-tested reliable ways to make a config language or a set of command line flags easier to use is good, complete documentation, though little things like integration with tab-completion or syntax highlighting can often go a long way too. These exist in almost any commonly used software found on a linux distro and are more than enough for someone willing to actually try stuff, which describes most of the people who can navigate doing anything that's not a default behavior of any OS anyway. Most people seem to have what I can only describe as learned helplessness about computers doing things they don't expect, but to be honest if you put people in an environment where they are motivated and don't feel afraid to mess up (which most educational contexts fail miserably at, both in terms of social norms and systemic incentives), most will actually start to figure stuff out a lot quicker than they expect themselves to. A small portion won't, and unfortunately most social environments are either too rushed or too high-pressure to facilitate this kind of exploration. But if we just accept that people are "non-technical" in the sense of "can't try anything remotely new in order to fix their computer", the only real way to satisfy those users is going to be keeping a system they already know how to use the same, which companies are simply not willing to do
To me, the main difference between open (like linux distros, but there are others) and closed computer operating systems is that the former tends not to tell you "Sit tight and we'll send a company-certified adult to help you" (or sometimes "This is not allowed", or "You need to pay extra for that now"), and the latter, increasingly, wherever possible, makes these the only options available
That is the paradox of the registry. It sounds like a great idea. "all your config in on place" "structured data" but in practice, I have found it sort of sucks.
I am not sure why this is. My best guess is it unpleasant to use because now you have two trees. only one has all the nice tooling and the other is sort of second class and can only be accessed via special mechanisms.
Honestly, I think it would have been better if the following was true:
1. it was portable
2. it was well documented ( I absolutely hated that I was finding out about some magical way of enabling something by putting magic string somewhere from a magazine ) -- all those options should be available for me to peruse. I am not even suggesting third party software, just Windows.
But I agree, somehow this idea seems better on paper than in practice.
Every time I read one to figure something out I just end up searching it online. Maybe I’m just dumb but they all read like they were written as self reminders for the author of the software, not for someone who doesn’t already know how to use it.
A sane program knows were to find the "random" configs: first, in cwd, then $XDG_CONFIG_HOME, then $XDG_CONFIG_DIRS. This is not exactly "obscure", you learn it soon and it's documented in every program.
The big advantage of this is that you can take your local config files and take it to other system. Can you do that with the Windows registry? Ironically, the only way to port settings in Windows is to have a .reg script and execute it, the thing you critisize.
And the Windows registry might be a single centralized config file, but config values are scattered through all the tree, and usually undocumented. E.g. this is a commonly recomended tweak:
The basics I'd say are still pretty much configurable via GUI so a newcomer wouldn't have hard times with either KDE, Gnome or Xfce. For majority it probably would be enough if GPU, sound and network drivers are working and it's possible to easily install apps they used to use on Windows or OSX/
Back around 2003 I read in local "Linux Magazine" about some project that tried bringing kind of a registry equivalent to Linux world. Sadly these were Internet caffee times so it was hard to track projects, so I really don't know what happen to it. The closest thing that resembles that idea is dconf.
With Windows nowadays you do all this tweaking or juggling within registry/group policy editor to protect yourself (and of course you do that if you care - majority of people don't) while with Linux I'd say it's more a matter of fine-tuning your distro of choice to your needs.
Yeah I actually miss the days of .ini files. They typically lived in the same directory as the program, so you didn't wind up with gigabytes of leftover tidbits from software you uninstalled or just ran once.
It's just config settings. It's not hard to understand. The registry is like Linux config files, and group policy is like a settings GUI menu. It's not absurd at all.
There’s official documentation for all Linux config files. Package managers are aware of config files and handle user changes during updates, if required. Config files are designed to be edited by humans and nearly all support some sort of comment syntax. None of these properties apply to editing registry settings.
Yes we had the time of total customisations with Firefox years ago. And now we can happy if they don't drop the about:config settings keys for some behavior.
The problem isn't the registry per se, but rather how so many settings are either undocumented totally unavailable on the most common versions of Windows.
This wouldn't even be sooooo bad if we could still google how to disable and fix everything... but complete google search collapse is exacerbating microsofts shit to an unbelievable unfixable level.
Like if some drastic new search doesn't appear within a couple years we are talking IT not being able to fix problems anymore
every software that ever updates has options that are subject to change; a user needs to be proactive in knowing whats running. i do agree we shouldnt need the privacy treadmill, but until we have better consumer laws the treadmill will continue...
as far as powershell scripts; i cant say i am a fan (i do like the potential targeting of offline machines with something like the mentioned website) - but my favorite to date is still: https://github.com/hellzerg/optimizer/
edit: if you end up trying out hellzerg's optimizer: do know that reboot button, once clicked, reboots right meow
I love fighting my libinput drivers every time I update. And lately the driver for my laptop keyboard is suddenly crashing without warning prompting a hard reboot every time. This was not an issue prior to a few months ago.
Linux software is not immune to frustrating changes
I use Blender3D for everything I (as a total non-professional novice) would need 3D graphics-wise, but as I understand it, there are a few CAD options available on Linux, and several more that run fine in WINE for those who need more professional or proprietary options.
On Linux there's FreeCAD, SolveSpace, Dune3d and OpenSCAD in (subjective) decending order of capability. FreeCAD still suffers from the "topological naming problem", though there's a fork that helps with that and merging it upstream is an ongoing process.
I purchased Alibre Atom3d because it was the only non-subscription affordable package I could find, but it's quite disappointing and won't run in wine anyway due to the licensing rootkit it uses. So I end up using one of the above linux capable tools, depending on the needs of the model. Each one has its strengths and weaknesses and none is satisfying overall. I reach for OnShape for any design that is going to be open source, because it is a pleasure to use (even though it is web-based), but I don't make enough money from CAD to pay for a $1500 annual subscription.
FreeCAD is ok, I use it for simple 3d printing designs, but you have to be very careful how you build the model as it likes to ruin dependencies if you change something in earlier sketch.
1.0 dev builds seem more user friendly.
Like some other good-bones free software, the UI is terrible. I challenge anyone who has prior CAD experience, but no FreeCAD experience, to install the software and design a simple bracket in under an hour.
I tried Fusion under Wine and it didn't really work. I haven't tried NX or Solidworks in the last few years.
> "I only use Windows as a game launcher (and I’m still on Windows 10), I don’t understand why anyone would need it anymore except games."
Thanks to Valve/Steam and Heroic (Epic Store client), and a few other handy tools including Valve's Proton (WINE fork) I haven't even needed Windows for games for ages now. I can live without the small handful of Linux-hostile Windows-only games that still won't run due to draconian DRM/AntiCheat, as the vast majority of my Steam library is "Click 'Play' and they just work", for Windows games and the many native Linux games I also have. Same for more'n half of the games I have on Epic (all from their freebie giveaways). The ones that don't work I can live without. Every other thing I want to do on my PC I've found native Linux software for that more than handles the task.
Would love to know more, maybe some pointers to tools/utils for getting these more difficult games going. I haven’t had the time to go further than using Steam and Lutris, which covers most of what I play, but would be good to have more options.
In every company I worked for (Germany, Poland, Sweden, Switzerland) it was all Windows laptops, that for the Linux component either used a VM, WSL or straight up servers.
I just don't want to work under such incapable management / IT department, that forces developers to use Windows. I have worked with Linux for 17 years and the last time I was forced to have a Windows VM was 14 years ago.
Yes, it limits available jobs and probably doesn't pay any top salaries. But better than selling myself to people I don't respect.
I admire this spirit, probably because I am still unable to put it in practice -- and those are typically moments where I dream of my own business. IT at my current employer is capable enough ( though there are rumblings of moving everything, but hardware offshore again.. I am starting to think it all moves in waves ), but our executives, well, lets just say over the past few weeks I was questioning what I am doing here.
Figma's valuation is a fragment of that of Adobe. Saying most designers use Figma is as distorted as saying most designers use macOS, even if both things may be true in a specific niche (e.g. tech companies in the US).
In my experience of the rise of macOS among developers, the biggest driving force was mobile app development and mobile web development because Apple refused to provide first party developer tools or emulators usable on other operating systems and made it intentionally difficult to run macOS on non-Apple hardware or in a VM. Previously macOS was largely associated with designers, not developers. This move also started blurring the lines more with designers making the move to development and (to a smaller degree) vice versa.
No, developers flocked to macOS because it runs unix and has a complete and nice looking UI with sensible design patterns designed by an actual designer instead of an engineer.
Development across the board is better on a mac for some / many people.
I think that's a fair take, it really does depend on which platform(s) you're developing for too.
And you're probably correct that Adobe has a larger share overall, but I would highly doubt that Illustrator or XD are being used more than Figma for UI design these days. Even less so, Photoshop, since it's a raster tool. Adobe was about ready to phase out XD when they were getting ready to purchase Figma.
Figma is free starting off, and their basic plans are extremely affordable compared to anything Adobe offers.
Although I probably have my price, I too otherwise refuse to work for companies that'd force me to use windows. I've been lucky to be able to use macs since 2008 and some of those companies had linux users. Most top tech companies will happily give you a choice between a mac or windows. For me it has generally mean I don't work for banks, the government, or very large organizations that aren't recent tech companies.
That being said, at a certain scale or type of company centralized management, software support, and security risks mean "allowing" random people to run their own OS becomes difficult and risky. Lots of large older companies probably have proprietary software, too (thankfully more of this is becoming web based).
Yes, in theory linux is more secure and anybody who would want to use it is probably capable of taking care of themselves, but it is probably (at large companies) corporate lawyers and CISOs ruining the fun. And linux can have its own risks and dedicating a team to support (from a security perspective) them isn't economical for the what would be very small user base. Ye old big bank can't and arguably shouldn't allow it without an otherwise good reason.
The good reason is to get your job done, which is what the computer is for. The tools many developers use today (e.g. containers) are Linux only and their target environment (i.e. the servers where their code will run) is Linux. The typical workaround is to use VMs. This results in terrible filesystem performance on both Mac and Windows, and on Windows I've also had to deal with things like time, DNS, and routing breaking in the VM, so now I need to know how to be a Linux and Windows sysadmin (i.e. not what you want to be paying me for) to fix it instead of just using e.g. Fedora which I've never had any issue with; it just works.
Another user commented about how it's unreasonable to ask them to run CAD software in a VM, but this is exactly what (some? many?) companies ask programmers to do. It's especially goofy if it's a software company where that development is their core business.
Apple Silicon means no discrete graphics card and no CUDA, no DirectX. It seems fine for machine learning, it falls short for other intensive applications.
Apple Silicon has the power envelope advantage, Intel and AMD chips remain faster for those who can deal with the power consumption (under lock when longer battery is really needed, and either be plugged or have a backup battery when going full throttle)
I've been using a Linux desktop workstation for like a decade. Never got on the laptop revolution, don't really understand it, seems like you're just setting yourself up for some savage RSI.
I've used a SP (7) with Linux. It works as a PC, but is not the move. Notes:
- Needed a custom kernel to get the pen (or was it touch) working?
- No good note taking applications (eg OneNote competitor)
- Notably latency on the pen.
- The first distro I attempted to install didn't work. (Manjaro?)
#1: Apple locks you into their ecosystem, and feels even creepier than MS.
#2: The Linux distros I've used are designed in a way so you shouldn't have to use the CLI and sudo for normal tasks, but you end up having to anyway in practice. It's a combination of annoying, and I, sooner-or-later, end up in a state where the system is "totaled"; easier to do a clean install than get it working again after the wrong CLI C+P broke something important.
e.g. I used to install qlplugins on every new macos device as our company bought them. Then one day Apple refused to run any 32-bit library despite the fact that 32 bit code still runs natively on x86-64 chips (this when everything still ran on x86-64 btw).
Designers still ask me: "Hey, how do I see the dimensions of this picture when pressing spacebar to preview it?" And I have to say: "Sorry, Apple said you can't do that anymore".
> Because maintaining 32 bit libraries when most of the world is 64 bit doesn’t make sense.
64bit code is the extension, not the base case.
32bit (x86) code just straight up runs on an x86-64 (64-bit) processor.
It's an artificial limitation that just doesn't make sense, and it can also be worse for performance too.
> This is not the same as apple actively forcing you into their ecosystem.
No?
Apple prevents 32bit libraries from running. This effected almost all the common cross-platform layers from running on MacOS.
In a single action, Apple eliminated the libraries that Steam games on MacOS used. Games would now have to be recompiled and were pushed to be downloadable through the Mac App Store, giving Apple their 30% cut.
> This is apple not supporting old technology.
If it's old then apple shouldn't support it? By that logic, we shouldn't be using ints in our code, we should only use 64-bit quaternions.
There is a difference between old and outdated. 32bit code is old. 32bit code is not outdated.
I didn’t read but the first sentence because you clearly don’t know that an OS must have both 32 bit libraries and 64 bit libraries to run both. Apple chose to leave 32 bit behind to stop maintaining it.
I know that a few years back before WSL was even a thing someone at Microsoft "leaked" that some departments were using macOS almost exclusively. I would be surprised if the decision makers who force all that crap into Edge actually dogfood the product. WSL, Azure and Windows Terminal are a different story though, which might explain why they hold up and aren't overloaded with bullshit.
On Pro it would be better to use the group policy editor. As a bonus this also ensures the setting survives updates, which is not always a given for raw registry edits.
If gpedit.msc gives you unexpected results (I.e. policies just don’t seem to work) then do two things:
1. gpupdate /force
2. Download the latest ADMX templates; newer versions of Windows often introduce similarly-named - but still distinct - policy templates, for unwanted “features” in older versions, just like Start Menu web-search and forced-restarts for updates.
Lastly, while Windows LTSC is really what Microsoft should make available for everyone, don’t forget that Windows Server is still Windows LTSC too - so if you’re outside the MSDN Subscription Garden-of-Eden, you can still get Windows Server tricked-out as a real LTSC Workstation OS.
It's frankly offensive that this utterly pointless "feature" can't just be disabled. Starting Photoshop used to be windowskey, "ph", enter. Now, by default, it will give you an Edge Bing search for "ph"...
But even if you wait a few seconds before confirming, you'll get some garbage like Windows Photos, even though that's literally never been used.
At least the start menu got a lot faster with the net search disabled, but dropping usage based ordering is just another sign that Windows is NOT aimed at power users anymore.
What do you mean when you say it doesn't "work"? You click the windows icon and nothing comes up? It displays but nothing is clickable? On 2 different machines? Really? This seems like hyperbole. It sounds like there's a specific feature that doesn't work for you as it used to, but instead of describing the issue you've thrown up your hands and declared it to not work. If it truly does not open or respond to clicks I'd love to know about it and retract this comment!
For me it truly does not open or respond to clicks, many times per day. Routinely the start menu opens on the wrong monitor, in a remote corner somewhere. And it does nothing when I click on it or press Enter. It's not a permanent condition, but a frequent one.
> You click the windows icon and nothing comes up?
Not the GP, but, yup. Got fixed about 6 months later in a routine update.
Wasn't just the start menu, none of the icons are responsive in the taskbar either, so I couldn't change the volume, or switch networks, etc.[1]
Luckily, for me, Windows is used almost exclusively for unimportant stuff, like games, netflix/disneyplus/prime, surfing, etc.
[1] Not a major issue: all my game (and firefox) shortcuts are on the desktop, my headset has a volume knob and the wifi can be turned off/then on again using the laptop Fn-key (which I only did when it lost a connection once).
- the start menu opens but displays only an empty box.
- the start menu opens fine, but application search produces zero results, not even if I type the complete name of the program I ran yesterday.
Yes, when something like this happens I throw my hands up and declare it not-working today. At least Winkey+R works and my most-used programs are pinned to the taskbar anyway.
Most of the time it's fixed after a good night's sleep, other times Windows manages to pull itself together after a few hours. It's usually not a blocker for me, so I don't care enough to keep rebooting my machine in the vain hope that some user action might fix it. It's my employer's machine, so my employer's problem, not mine.
Virus? I’ve used window for over 2 decades, along with Linux and I’ve never seen the start menu do anything like that. I’ve seen it hang of course, but I don’t even remember the last time.
I have absolutely none of these problems on my Windows 11 pro for workstations desktop. My computer is very much my computer and I seem to have full total control over everything. I'm not sure what I do differently than everyone else but that's just how it is.
It’s software running on your own computer. If you’re not supposed to turn off ads and OneDrive, change the default search engine, etc then that’s a pretty sad state of affairs.
Though as an ex-Windows developer and hacker, I can tell you that NT is pretty modular and is designed to be “fucked” with in various different ways. Microsoft just like to ship defaults that are more favourable for their own business than your typical power user.
I wouldn’t mind the defaults if they weren’t horrible. No, I don’t want Microsoft selling my data to 3rd parties. I don’t want an AI “assistant” watching everything I do. I don’t want crazy right wing conspiracy theory news stories in my start menu, or popping up next to the clock or wherever that junk lives. I don’t want my start menu to do an internet search. Or to try and get me to play candy crush. If I want a dropbox like service I’ll research my options. Don’t auto install onedrive and make it start automatically at boot.
None of that stuff is a core component. The only reason any of that stuff is part of windows is because windows is a mature product. And all their desperate product managers need to add stupid features to windows to justify getting promoted.
Maybe I’m just old fashioned, but I don’t use windows because I want to be part of Microsoft’s software empire. I just want an OS that boots fast and lets me play video games. I don’t buy ram from the computer store so some tasteless bozo at Microsoft can justify their 6 figure salary.
Try completely removing one drive to understand the rest of our pain. Even if you manage to get the program gone, somehow the default file save location for many applications is still a (now deleted) one drive folder. If you forget and click save.. well now you have one drive again.
Leave it alone, that's why Windows is breaking for you. You keep fucking with core components. It's not Linux. You can't do that and not suffer consequences.
Onedrive is not a core windows component. It’s not a dependency of other applications. It’s just a Dropbox replacement.
Windows works, and has always worked, just fine without onedrive. Microsoft just doesn’t want you to know that, because they are obsessed with the idea of upselling you on subscription based cloud services.
There’s actually a few different glibc replacements available for Linux.
And if you think OneDrive is essential for Windows then I’d suggest you do a little reading on the history of Microsoft and how they falsely claim dependencies on their own software stacks. Especially the court cases around debundling IE4 with Win98, and DR-DOS vs Windows 95.
Well, "technically" - it wasn't a false claim. It WAS dependent on IE and other things. It didn't have to be dependent - MS made it that way on purpose, so things would stop working without (even though the dependency didn't need to be baked in).
It's akin to adding webview to your application to display a text file, even though you never would display an HTML file. It could have been done another way, but it wasn't.
Except that it was demonstrated that IE could be removed from Windows 98. So Microsoft then claimed that Windows ran slower without IE. A judge (because this whole saga went to court) argued that Microsofts video evidence proving that point was falsified and so Microsoft later also dropped their slowness claim too.
No, it wasn't. There was w98lite and such where you could replace WIndows 98's (i)explore.exe/shell32.dll with a Windows 95 one and yet the rest of the software just ran like nothing, while being able to run IE in a standalone way.
Ignoring the fact that you're comparing a cloud storage client to what is essentially a kernel wrapper that all software depends on, you actually can remove glibc without breaking things. You just also have to install another libc (say, musl) and replace your software that targets glibc with software that targets musl, or install a glibc -> musl compatibility layer (gcompat).
So, yeah. If you actually know enough about libcs to want to get rid of glibc for a real reason, you can do it without breaking things. If you just want to go around and start deleting core system dependencies (which I think is very silly to put a cloud storage client in that bucket, regardless of the brand of cloud storage) without replacing them, then chaos seems to be the goal, and maybe order is the "broken" state for that machine :P
Leave it alone? It's unnecessary bloatware, that performs absolutely zero required functionality. It's continuous prominent presence in the _always_ visible part of the file tree on the left of _every_ explorer window is a constant reminder that what used to be my favorite OS is now user hostile.
At least in Europe it did get a proper uninstall a while ago, which proves that it really was just there for promotion.
I'd gladly pay for a version of Windows that just leaves me alone. No I don't want Edge, Bing, a weather snippet, start search, Cortana, forced updates and a regular black pattern maze promising a somehow "improved experience" while trying to force metrics participation down my throat.
But I also don't want Linux, because many tools I rely on (plus games) won't run on it and I don't want a Mac because it's too opinionated. It feels exactly like being stuck in an abusive relationship at this point.
Now you can, in Europe. It used to involve registry hacks, which, as others keep pointing out, could break stuff because it's not the way you are supposed to modify your OS.
Unnecessary bloatware? Bloatware really? What does it bloat? You can make all of these things disappear without removing them from Windows itself. You also have to remember that an inaction is an action. Ignoring a pop-up or not reading something and then just clicking x doesn't equal this thing will not bother me anymore. You can make the weather snippet widget thing just not be there anymore and it's not hard. I have more than just edge installed for my browser and I could switch between them even though I favor edge and use edge as my default browser. Cortana hasn't showed itself on my computer for... I have no idea how long and that's just because I went through every setting and read everything... No group policy changes, no registry hacks, just using Windows. If you are on professional or higher of windows then you could just pause updates over and over and over. If an update is waiting then go into Windows update in the settings and click pause and then it doesn't install it. I've postponed updating since January because I'm on an insider build that has a known blocker where it can't be updated from.
Yes. I don't want it, I don't need it, my OS does not need it to function, I never asked for it and (until the EU forced them to change this) I could not remove it.
> Bloatware really?
Yes, really. "Unwanted software included on a new computer or mobile device by the manufacturer". What in this definition does not apply, according to you?
> What does it bloat?
My OS, duh. It probably does not waste too many resources, as long as I don't engage with it, but the fact that it's there and it was shoved into my face on every explorer window is something worse than spam. It's basically the modern day equivalent of those shitty browser toolbars that some programs used to try to sneak install.
> You can make all of these things disappear
False. I was only able to fully disable OneDrive with registry hacks, before EU forced them to take it out.
So you are telling me, a Windows power user since 3.11, that I should just rtfm?
It's not about being able to turn certain things off, it's about the playbook that Microsoft is following these days, displaying malignant, almost petty behavior, like restoring the Edge shortcut on the desktop after updates.
It's about all the black patterns, like how you need to first go back a page in the post-update maze before you even get the option to continue without attaching a Microsoft account to your OS. Yes, I know that you can turn the maze off, but that option is hidden so far in the settings most users have no idea it even exists.
It's about the fact that they even dared to suggest putting ads in Explorer windows. It's about the clear sensation that my OS is no longer on my side. It's selling out, stabbing me in the back, turning rotten. It's a crying shame, but I may need to take it out to the back of the shed one of these days.
You're getting downvoted, as will I, because presenting an alternative anecdotal experience isn't acceptable in Windows threads. I've learned this the hard way.
Unfortunately just like the original post is anecdotal (I haven't had a machine fail to startup after an update since XP) not all anecdotes are born equal.
Interestingly, I don't see adverts myself, and I've never seen any at work. I -suspect- that's heavily regionalized.
Are there features I don't care for? Sure - I don't use OneDrive, I don't internet search from the Start bar, and I use Edge only occasionally. But it's not like somehow you -have- to use everything they ship.
I get it. An OS is personal. If you don't like Windows, use MacOS or Linux. All 3 have different approaches and one of them will fit you better than the others. Arguing over which is better or worse is like fighting over ice-cream flavors.
Yes you have to use what they ship. Because they force you to. You cannot turn off one drive nagging. You cannot turn off the start menu search. When installing windows these days you have to use a Microsoft account and so on.
Yes there are work arounds, but that’s not for the average user. If I need to start tinkering and hack around in registries I might as well use Linux.
I confess I don't have a Microsoft account, and installed without one. I'm not sure how I did that, I guess I just passed on it. Every month or so it after a reboot it prompts me to "finish setting up my computer" and I just "remind me later".
I haven't touched the registry, so that's not in play.
OneDrive doesn't nag me.
As I said earlier this is all anecdotal, clearly your experience is different to mine. This post is just anecdotes, not data, and I'm not suggesting my experience is your experience.
I had to install a temporary windows 10 (not 11) install so that I can unlock the bootloader of a xiaomi phone and install a better rom. I managed to avoid the microsoft account use by not connecting to the internet before the setup was finished. It asked me like 2 or 3 times it looped 2 or 3 times in the select wifi / use MS account screens before giving up and sending me to the local account creation.
Unless you keep modifying the registry to disable it, you do, every time you do a search. You're just not using those results. But you're still getting the crappy experience of delayed actions when you just want the local results.
I just looked and I don't get them but I see them on others computers. I can't remember doing any registry hacks on this so not sure why I don't get them... Maybe because I upgraded from windows 7 and never had a windows account, running as local user only?
It's normally active for local users as well. It is for me and I never logged in. You're (accidentally?) running with an unusual config for some reason. The way to turn it off also changed a couple of times already, so you're really lucky you've avoided it.
It's because people fuck with the registry, run those decrapifier scripts etc. They completely mess with the guts doing nonstandard things and eventually it turns into a mess. Ask me how I know.
After I started administering fleets of Windows machines, I learned that if you don't fuck with it, it's fine!
If you need to make changes, use group policy. Don't like OneDrive? Don't use it! Uninstalling it is going to fuck things up.
Install updates as they come. "But it breaks things!" No it doesn't. It only does if you've fucked your registry to hell.
Just leave things alone and stop trying to customize it like a Linux box is my advice. It is what it is and will work fine if you use it the way it's intended.
> Don't like OneDrive? Don't use it! Uninstalling it is going to fuck things up.
OneDrive in the end is a component designed to exfiltrate documents. Wanting to remove a security vulnerability should not brick a device. Asking people to not use it is not a solution because you are prompted to send your documents over the internet to a third party every single time you save a new file.
No, I absolutely want it off my computer. But then I'm not going to bother with weird registry scripts. Windows won't let me easily remove things, so I removed windows.
<< It is what it is and will work fine if you use it the way it's intended.
That may be true for work PCs, where my access is already restricted and heavily monitored, but I don't accept that for my personal machine.
<< It's because people fuck with the registry,
Hey, if MS wants to put configs somewhere else that is cool too. I don't understand how it is somehow expected that I don't touch the magic box ( because it is all held by rubber band and glue ). It is not some rinky-dink shop that made its first release. It is a global company. I simply expect more.
<< Install updates as they come.
This is for the user to decide. I am personally livid that windows machines update bios these days without any user interaction. If I ever saw retarded setting just waiting to cause a major issue, this is it.
<< Just leave things alone and stop trying to customize it like a Linux box
I use my Windows instance in a VM so I suppose I technically am leaving it mostly alone, but even then I chose to make some changes to registry to make the access easier for myself.
If I may get a little personal for a moment. I think your professional experience may be clouding your judgment in this case. I see it fairly often across a wide variety of professions, where various representatives consider client/user/buyer a hindrance of sorts that should make their lives easier 'by just doing X'. The thing is, the relationship is really not about making the representative's life easier.
> Since when is 6.6.1.40 better than 6.6.1.72? Why would you do that?
well, recently, there was a compromised update to a software package and the recommendation was to roll back to a previous version. there are definite times when removing the latest not-so-greatest for a previous version is the best solution. there's no reason to lose the plot in your ranting. you just lose credibility in your arguments at that point
"The US federal Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency has issued a security advisory recommending that the affected devices should roll back to a previous uncompromised version."[0]
You can use Windows Firewall to block outbound connections from the Start bar. It would be nice if some basic features like calculator would still work, but no luck.
I think they mean calculation from the start menu search (on a default installation, it will Bing the calculation and show the search result, which I find absurd since it requires an internet connection to solve x+y). The calculator program still works fine offline, but is often overkill when you just want to quickly solve something
I'll note that Microsoft's PowerToys run solves this properly, just like MacOS's Spotlight and the built in search on most Linux desktops
If you mean "PowerToys Run", you can reconfigure pretty much any if the PowerToys shortcut key combinations.
Though for now I've just turned that one off as I don't have obvious need for it and haven't looked at what else it might offer. I use PowerToys mainly for FancyZones and plain text paste.
I would also recommend starship (https://starship.rs/) for your Powershell, which is cross platform and therefore usable for all popular shells. Scoop can also install and manage nerd fonts:
Absolutely. In my company I'm forced to use Windows, because we develop Windows software (WPF). I'm not totally happy with Windows (especially 11), but I tend to look for jobs that have nothing to do with what I'm too familiar with to gain new knowledge. However, I'm trying to make the windows experience as good as possible for my personal taste :-) Additionally I hope I can help to migrate to a web based solution in the future.
I'm also running a number of additional software on mac to make the experience more liveable (Alfred, scroll inverter, ice, rectangle, iterm,...). I think the big companies got to the point where they do the bare minimum for Gene Public to accept the useability, and leave the rest of us with our ### dangling to fill in the gap.
Probably something to do with maximizing profit and minimizing expense?
I want to use natural scrolling on the trackpad and the normal mouse wheel direction. There's no way to do that out of the box, you need scroll reverser.
Starship is just a fancy prompt that just happens to be crazy cross-platform (works on Linux, MacOS, and Windows shells), but it's super-informative, and easy to install/configure. Beyond that, you'll still need to choose a shell you prefer for when you want/need to use a terminal/console window for things. Contrary to popular belief, the shell is not obsolete by a longshot, even on Windows. On Windows, PowerShell is probably gonna be your best bet, as it's the current standard going forward. I use Starship on Fish shell on Linux and love it.
Basically, starship is a config generator for your shell. It transforms a cross platform config file (starship.toml) into a platform specific configuration shell script, e.g.:
starship init zsh
will output something like
zmodload zsh/parameter # Needed to access jobstates variable for STARSHIP_JOBS_COUNT
# Defines a function `__starship_get_time` that sets the time since epoch in millis in STARSHIP_CAPTURED_TIME.
if [[ $ZSH_VERSION == ([1-4]*) ]]; then
# ZSH <= 5; Does not have a built-in variable so we will rely on Starship's inbuilt time function.
__starship_get_time() {
STARSHIP_CAPTURED_TIME=$(/home/andreas/bin/starship time)
}
else
zmodload zsh/datetime
zmodload zsh/mathfunc
__starship_get_time() {
(( STARSHIP_CAPTURED_TIME = int(rint(EPOCHREALTIME * 1000)) ))
}
fi
# ...
# ...
For PowerShell the output will look accordingly - the config stays the same. I've had a bunch of custom zsh / powershell config dotfiles for years now, starship just eases it out :-)
powershell is light years easier than bash. like, im fluent in bash enough to get stuff done, but i only got there over years, while i picked up powershell fairly quickly. also wayyyyy more readable.
i'll admit the object vs text thing is annoying, i feel like bash is more straightforward there, but PS will let you do the same thing eventually.
I would have thought Microsoft on is dotnet multi-platform journey would find a way to make PowerShell just POSIX compatible, supporting at least standard all day commands like `grep`, `wc`, `find` and others. All it would have taken is to create aliases or replacements for the top 50 shell commands.
Instead they re-invented the wheel. It's not a bad wheel, but the wheel is completely different than most people would expected to be and for POSIX enthusiast it just does not feel right.
With wsl or git bash you can do this but it feels slow and clunky most of the time.
As already stated: At home I use Fedora (and others). Company restricts me to use Windows - well technically, the project does, but company IT would not be happy, if I'd use Linux there.
And no, this is not a reason to leave an otherwise perfectly fine job behind.
same boat, fedora at home, windows at work. and that's fine -- keeps me plugged into the windows infra that runs the world to some degree.
older jobs let us put whatever on the laptops, and even had hardening scripts if we wanted to use linux. only approved linux was ubuntu, but you could slap mint or other derivatives in there and get away with it / not have concerns.
1) WSL2 is fantastic to work. Having various Linux images on my system is nice, this is huge for me alone
2) plenty of things work just better on windows like Docker
3) stuff like power tools is insanely useful
4) monitor, windows and desktop management is very well done in comparison to the mess of MacOS
5) I don't have all these issues the article describes. An automatic update has never broken my computer let alone ruined my flow
6) I don't see these ads, maybe in the start menu there are but I just never use it I have shortcuts
7) MacOS is way more annoying
for me. I really dislike the filesystem, the window management, the fact that it will be always a third class citizen to Linux for software development (still have nightmares about installing Haskell and other languages on MacOS), the fact that it keeps resetting the output of my monitors at every sleep
I could provide other reasons but essentially it is way better for me and my use case than alternatives.
Unless I'm using a laptop, there I prefer MacOS for hardware.
I find it curious that you say things like "Docker runs better on Windows" but also "MacOS is worse than Linux for development". It reads like you think you have two choices Windows or MacOS, and that it's very unfortunate that they're both worse than Linux. Why isn't Linux one of the options?
And yes, Docker and most other development works better on Linux than any other OS.
Because WSL 2 satisfies all my Linux needs, and yes, it runs Docker perfectly and Windows is a better desktop OS, with more tools and software.
I used to run mint, ubuntu and some others up to Windows 10 I never considered a productive machine on my desktop but this has changed during the last years and Windows is an incredibly productive machine for software development.
Anyway I'm not trying to sell anybody Windows, was just answering a pointless comment like "I don't understand why would anybody use Windows", and I answered that there's plenty of reasons and tools for me, but I ain't gonna die if you force me on other OSs too.
> Windows is a better desktop OS, with more tools and software.
What tools are you using on Windows specifically? Visual Studio, maybe?
I only ask because, other than workflow-specific tooling (Photoshop, etc), no one is creating non-Electron GUIs anymore, and with non-GUIs Windows used to be far behind for Windows-specific software.
1) I'll agree that WSL2 is excellent, but the native "unix" environment of macos has meant that I haven't had very many issues doing work that ultimately runs on linux natively from a mac.
2) This makes no sense to me. I've run docker on my mac with zero issues, except that the move to apple silicon has caused some disruption for cases where I build and push images locally (99% is done via CI/CD, but there are always exceptions) and I have to specify linux/amd64, which with some tooling is actually quite painful.
3) Yeah, powertools is nice.
4) This is absolutely true. The most recent macos announcement does add some better native window management, but all I really want is to be able to plug in my external monitors and have macos not switch them around half the time. It's frustrating as this used to work until around 2012 or so, and then just broke and was never fixed.
5) I've run into windows updates reverting settings or replacing defaults that point to third parties. To be fair, macos has sometimes done this, too. In particular it used to re-enable siri after every OS point release.
6) The ads are there and (with effort) can be removed. But it's the principle. Some product manager thought that this is a good idea - the good idea being something that's good for microsoft and not the user. This way of thinking can and does lead to rot by a thousand cuts. What's next enabling location tracking for the advertisers, thus making my laptops battery slightly worse? - google did this with android. This way of thinking has been killing google.
7) Most of this is repeating point 4 which I agree with, but its filesystem is just a posix filesystem. Mind you the finder has it's strengths and weaknesses - it took awhile to get used to, but it's never really gotten in my way. Calling macos third class for linux development is just plain incorrect. One of the main reasons MacOS took off when it did is because so many developers moved to it because they could use the same "unix/linux" tools more natively than windows, but didn't have to deal with linux on the desktop. Web developers in particular could easily run apache/php/etc as well as various design tools from Adobe or whoever. I've not seen too many complaints with most languages on it, but I could see more niche ones like Haskell being painful.
> I could provide other reasons but essentially it is way better for me and my use case than alternatives.
This is what ultimately matters. :-)
> Unless I'm using a laptop, there I prefer MacOS for hardware.
Hilariously for me, the one thing that's more painful than anything else when using windows is the poor quality of the bloody trackpads, even on more expensive/premium hardware (I haven't bought a windows laptop since before covid, so maybe this is better now?). Though a close second is having to deal with various pop-ups (from both windows and other software/utilities) that seem to vie for my attention.
That's not the exclusive problem to Microsoft - it happens all around us within the IT world. The corporations stopped acknowledging the permanent "No" anymore and the actual user choice. It's a plain harassment up until you give up and agree to what you get shoveled with.
Whenever I read comments regarding last two Windows versions and issues people had or have with these, or news about newest Microsoft "ideas" - I ask myself, where the hell are regulators?
Reading through this thread as an user of Windows from the EU most of the issues I see mentioned here are just non-existent, like OneDrive nagging that has never happened to me
I have been lucky on multiple installs on multiple computers? I'm not saying what people are complaining about are lies, I'm saying the issues don't seem to exist in EU installs on Windows. For example the only ads I've seen were during the initial setup screen and pre-installed apps/shortcuts that are gone in a minute of work, and OneDrive can be uninstalled in two clicks.
The only issue that is still here would be bing in start search but that's trivial to disable compared to the configurations I had to do on my linux desktops, so while it is bad and shouldn't be a thing I don't see it as a big issue when comparing to linux.
did cookie banners exist without the law? largely not, which is why people perceive it to be a "cookie banner law" no matter what is technically written in it.
Only problem with GDPR is that while the spirit/intention of the law is great (and it even prohibits malicious compliance such as consent prompts that make it more difficult to decline than accept), enforcement is significantly lacking which means it's still more profitable to breach it than respect it.
I would say the problem is rather that companies are becoming too big to cares. Meta has been fined several times, in total for more than 2 billions. Amazon ? 746 millions. Tik tok? 345 millions. And yet it's a small price to pay for them
Author says what I'm repeating since day one when GDPR and these so-called banner with "preferences" were introduced: this should be handled by the browsers.
The idea was good but the interpretation and implementation of this law failed - the banners, cookies aren't as permanent and universal as browser sending the header.
We have killed them. If a government tries to do anything against a company that isn't a perfect 1:1 mapping to an explicit thing in the law that they are breaking, the company will sue back and win. And if they try to pass such a law, the biggest companies are powerful enough to get rid of them next term, so they don't even try.
Happens to me all the time with Google because I'm choosing not to pay for their backup. They constantly bother me about almost running out of space, even with a modal that requires you to use a toggle to dismiss it without accepting. It's gross.
I built my GNU/Linux config years ago. The amount of time I spend changing things per year is asymptotically approaching zero.
My other comment was not actually about that though. It was about my computer not actually fighting me over random things, such that I have to circumvent normal means like using the Windows Registry to get what I want done. If you get to the point where you're twiddling with Registry values, you have sunken a lot of time into that problem.
more or less, yeah. i have an apt install one-liner, a big one, saved in a .txt file saved in my email.
install basic ubanto and then run that bad boy. walk away for 15 min while it does its thing, and then generally good to go. at that point it's just changing the desktop background and ps1 colors
> You just use Mac or Linux without changing anything?
Mac, no. It's almost as bad as windows in terms of having to chase perpetual change for no reason.
Linux though? Absolutely. Nothing changes unless I want it to change. Here's an admittedly extreme, but very real example: I build my parents a simplified Linux desktop setup ca.1996 (neither had any computer experience so wanted to keep it very simple).
Today ~28 years later, my remaining parent is using the exact same setup. The last thing you want to impose on a 95 year old with fading vision is an interface change. So it is exactly what it was in 1996. Through several hardware replacements, countless updates and even distro changes, it is still exactly the same.
This is what user-friendly means. I, the user, own the experience. Neither microsoft nor apple are able to respect that.
> Today ~28 years later, my remaining parent is using the exact same setup. The last thing you want to impose on a 95 year old with fading vision is an interface change. So it is exactly what it was in 1996. Through several hardware replacements, countless updates and even distro changes, it is still exactly the same.
Thats impressive and something I wouldn't expect to work. Are they running CDE or is there some other desktop environment that was around back then? What distribution are they using now? Do you have to do much configuration to keep the kernel up to date with an old DE?
fvwm, customized to be basically a kiosk-like desktop with a few large buttons for different use cases (each one a virtual screen).
Currently on debian, don't remember which distros I used initially. Probably started on slackware.
For email, mutt & emacs. Although both are heavily customized to have simple and minimal commands available, so a regular mutt or emacs user would be a bit lost.
I can't stress enough the power of customizable software! The ones on list list (fvwm, mutt, emacs) are prime examples of excellence on this front.
There is nothing worse than "opinionated" software that doesn't allow extensive customization. Even worse, when they change interfaces every time a new PM joins the company. For older people, any change in interface is a huge setback. There is unappreciated value in software than can be fully customized and then left alone.
The one and only change I made to the setup over the years was to remove the connect/disconnect icons for the (dialup) modem when I upgraded them to DSL and even that small change took a months before they stopped asking about it.
The most problematic part of this stack has been the browser, which I can't keep static and has changed a bunch of times in the last ~28 years. To the extent possible I configure the toolbar to be minimal. But the basic functionality of clicking on home button and back button hasn't really changed in the last three decades and that's basically all they need, so it's been manageable.
Not exclusively a Microsoft/Windows problem. It reminds me the nagging "Update iOS" messages in iphone, that take you to a new screen to dismiss them. Also in iOS, you can't use their wallet app for tickets and other cards if you don't add a payment card there, because they have this huge banner that says "Get started with Apple Pay" and that can't be dismissed. Disgusting.
This is false. I don’t use Apple Pay and I have lots of tickets and such. You don’t add them from within the Wallet app. The Apple Pay prompt is shown whenever you don’t have any passes or whatever in the wallet.
I've added some passes, thing is there. Last time at the AWS summit I had to hold the blasted banner on the edge of the iphone with a finger while they scanned the pass.
I literally just opened the wallet app and clicked the little dismiss X in the top right of the Apple Card ad. It disappeared with a little analog TV powering off animation, collapsing down to a scanline then sliding in horizontally to a little dot and disappearing.
Both before and after I could pull up my other passes easily.
> All this fuzzy language makes me feel like I'm dealing with a kindergarden teacher addressing his/her pupils.
Very fitting… both the kindergarten teacher addressing her pupils vs Windows abusing its users have the one thing in common - people who have zero chance of escaping their control and little influence to chamge their situation. In the business world, it’s called a captive market
It's sad to see Windows fall so far from the Win2k days but this trajectory has been obvious since Windows XP.
Fortunately or unfortunately, for most people for most things, the host OS hardly matters anymore. The operating system is now the browser. And this "doesn't feel like mine anymore" is 100x worse there because corporations have fogotten that they're voluntarily presenting data upon the request of an external client and what said client does with the data is none of their business. It's as if visiting a website and downloading the publicly available contents is a nation setting up an embassy of "foreign soil" on your hardware. Editing CSS (or whatever) is equivalent to vandalizing a physical storefront because the pixels on your monitor are theirs not yours despite it being your hardware. Even the very protocol of hypertext transport (HTTP/3) is now designed around being encryption verified JS application delivery for corporate person use cases with no allowances for HTML hypertext transport for human person use cases. So not even linux/mac/bsd/etc is free from the trend.
People need to get over the in OS ads. They’re easily removable honestly. Personally I’ve never seen windows look this good in years. The whole system shell looks really good and well designed these days. On top of that the included features like wsl2 and hyperv are great.
I disagree that we should just "get over" ads, I fucking paid cold hard cash for a Windows license after all. It's either ads with a free license, or no ads with a license bought and paid for. No fucking double dipping.
That said, most if not all the nonsense can easily be disabled or removed so I agree with your overall position.
Why? I’ve found practically any license key from any old pc as far back as win7 will enable win11 pro. Am I missing something here? Did you actually buy a $200 win11 license? If so yeah that's a pretty fair complaint.
This is the road to hell. We all know that advertising eventually corrupts the advertising platform. It happened with radio, broadcast TV, cable TV and the web.
You'll be very sorry in a very short time if you put up with ads in an OS you paid for, on hardware you paid for. You're letting Microsoft externalize some of the cost of advertising to you.
it's really not the ads that upset me, it's the remotely exploitable vulnerabilities that take Microsoft 3 years to fix that's kind of where I have a problem. I stopped using Microsoft products in like 1991 man sorry
Really i Don't like windows but the text editor or the official tools like powerpoint, mas word, Excel more good than LibreOffice.
I use it for my paper because my collage.
In the latter case, some (most?) countries require the use of open software and standards in government and various regulated environments unless there's a specific and documented reason why that's practically impossible. You may be able to tell your college they need to support open software rather than requiring everyone to buy proprietary licenses and get familiar with those specific products
(A bit off-topic, but I can recommend using a translator to turn what you've written in English back into a language you're familiar with, to check that it says what your intended. That way, you practice writing and can check the result for good communication also. I've been doing this for German and this is helping me practice in situations where I otherwise would use a translator from my languages into German because the translation's correctness matters.)
Windows is the only reasonable option for someone who wants a modern desktop but doesn’t want a Mac. Apple has been integrating ID into their systems for years and nobody bats an eye. Do you want a computer that “feels like” something or do you want to get work done?
At least with Windows you don’t have to gaslight yourself into thinking that blurry fonts are better. If you have a setup with multiple high-res monitors (or, God forbid, have to mess with scaling), it takes a lot of work to be happy with the looks and feel of a Linux desktop compared to what you get out of the box with Windows or a Mac.
This is the quintessential Linux issue. The whole system works, but there's always some minor hitch that makes the experience less seamless than the "corporate" counterparts. Oh, there's lag when you scroll, or the scroll behaves erratically in general? That's actually been an issue for 10+ years, get used to it. Screen tearing? Well, here's the solution, but it has drawbacks and breaks something else somewhere else. System nukes itself after an update? You're on your own now.
In terms of modifiability and openness, open source anything is far superior to anything else - which is valuable for a community like this. But there's still plenty to do in terms of providing as seamless of an experience to some average Joe as what macOS/Windows does.
And yet you still don't need to sign in with an Apple ID unless you want to. Microsoft makes it annoyingly hard to set up your computer with a local-only account.
There's no substance to any of these gripes. What advertising? The section hardly describes where/what that is. Sure there's Microsoft Store/app related things (if you use them) but other than that, isn't most of it third-party/manufacturer-included bloat and ads? I don't see any ads on my Win 11 install anywhere. I never use the Start menu except for my already pinned/frequently used apps. Most of my apps are no MS-related.... VS Code and OS stuff excepted. No ads there. Not using Edge browser so that eliminates any of that MS/Bing/whatever related ads. The file explorer mostly works. Problems with updates come and go, but are minor/years apart. There's no particular lock-in at the level of Mac OS, and I can manage my device/files/plug'n'play mostly without any restrictions. It still feels like my machine in ways that Macs never do.
I sort of figured that anyone capable of leaving that abusive relationship would've done so long ago, but apparently Microsoft Windows still has something to lose.
2024 won't be the year of the Linux desktop, but it will be the year of the Linux desktop for everyone who gives a damn about having control over their digital life. PopOS is lovely so far, I cringe every time I have to interface with Windows 11 for my job.
I don’t think Linux needs to win in one big swoop year. I can see it slowly eating away at windows until it’s as big as MacOS or bigger. I think there could be a tipping point when certain Linux distros are just better for almost everything and windows looks silly in comparison.
can someone suggest tips to remove all the bloatware from HP/Dell/etc and reinstall a cleaner minimalistic windows in a laptop? How do I know all the compatible drivers that exactly map to my specific laptop? The vendor websites are sometimes ambiguous and I don't get the confidence that right drivers would be installed. If reinstallation is too much of a hassle, is there at least some kind of script that can remove all the non-essential bloatware and make windows lean?
If you want to make it easy, then the best way to go is to download Windows ISO from Microsoft. Then install Wifi driver if it is not working out of the box. Then install something like Dell Command Update to install the rest of the drivers.
The only reason I still dual boot win11 is for 3 programs that require windows only drivers. I purchased that laptop specifically because it supported dual ssd.
Win11 offline install and de-dork instructions is a must:
Even then, one must assume win11 comes with a telemetry payload every second update.
Linux has its own share of issues, but is far easier to develop on (if you check the hardware support before purchase). The only parts of win11 that are any good was the FOSS they packaged in.
Strange times for sure, MS still chasing a set-top box market 30 years after it flopped =)
People don't switch operating systems at the drop of a hat. There's got to be a pretty good reason for it. All the people switching away from Windows, those are probably users that are lost to Microsoft forever. I get that their money comes from other places, but I bet there's a second-order effect of people who don't use Windows—maybe even people who now hate Windows—not having any desire stick with their other products or services either. It's weird that they don't seem to care about this slow diminution of their brand.
And I think that's why Windows gets worse. They just don't care anymore. I have wanted to like Windows and hoped Microsoft to get serious against these consumer-centric companies like Apple and Google, to use their cloud revenue to pump Windows up. That hasn't happened.
> Microsoft to get serious against these consumer-centric companies like Apple and Google
Microsoft can't do that. It's not in their DNA. Every time Microsoft has tried to make something consumer-centric it ended up flopping eventually. Sometimes things lasted a surprisingly long time!
But their consumer-focused stuff like Zune, Xbox, even their keyboards & mice, eventually all kinda lost focus.
Windows mobile was a weird one because they tried to use the same formula they always use - a corporate OS that had all sorts of knobs and buttons for SysAdmins to manage corporate phones. You could join a Windows phone to a domain and manage it.
Xbox was pretty successful for a while because MS just has so much clout with game developers.
Zune flopped HARD. I think the Surface product line has been kinda here and there - a total failure for consumers but some businesses like it... but not many, because most businesses have a relationship with Dell.
RIP Zune. It was my favorite music player, especially being able to control it without looking at the controls. Tech industries have developed alternatives, but the intuitive features built into the Zune are something I've yet to see be matched. I suspect they moved some of those same UX engineers to the Surface & phone departments, but MS marketing departments seem to have control over things more than the actual UX designers, aaaand it all went to shit.
I sincerely wish more people were able to enjoy the UX that their clever engineers designed, but I suspect their marketing departments were the downfall of those efforts.
I don't think stock would be a good metric. If I had to guess, Windows at this point is probably just a cost center. Their main revenue streams are office362 and azure. The Windows OS itself is just a rounding error.
Another way to put it. People aren't buying Microsoft stock because of Windows. They are buying because of Azure and Office365.
To be fair, the Windows experience on managed corporate PCs that are imaged without all the fluff and adware is far superior to what consumers get.
I frankly don't know why anyone who isn't tied to very specific software requirements would ever choose Windows anymore.
I had to replace an aging Pixelbook last year and eventually decided the right decision was to get a Mac. It's stable, the hardware is high quality, it does what it needs to do, most non-enterprise software is available, and the custodian of the operating system isn't licensing my data to 3P advertisers. I almost went Linux -- and have built my own Linux machines dating back about twenty years -- but I just wanted a polished, lightweight laptop I didn't have to worry about. I almost bought a new Chromebook, but the software problem is more acute even if the OS is dead simple, and frankly, the hardware -- ever since the Pixelbook -- has been lacking polish (no matter which OEM you buy from).
The problem with the Chromebook is that it's basically an educational market product. And that's a different market from most professional users. I'd love a new travel-optimized Chromebook to replace one well out of support. But it really doesn't exist (and there really isn't a perfect MacBook either although the Air isn't bad, if pricey).
Desktop operating systems are increasingly irrelevant (to a first approximation). Windows is still very relevant, especially on servers, but even on corporate desktops; you just don't see a lot of Windows laptops at the sort of events and companies that most of the readers here are probably most familiar with. But it's not like most companies developing software for the largely Linux ecosystem are doing much desktop-specific investment either. Apple's a bit more complicated because they still want to sell Macs so their operating system can't get too bad--but it's only there to sell MacBooks.
yes but making huge profits (and employee compensation rising w/ stock grants and options) explains why nobody there is all that worried that users are unhappy with Windows
I wonder if we're already lost (including myself in "we"). The average home user has ditched MS Office, and is using cloud apps such as Google Docs. They don't even have a reason to know what OS they're using. Things like battery life and wake-up times are what my work colleagues talk about at the lunch table. Setup might be a hassle, but occurs once in the life of the computer. Often, the discussion is in the context of an elderly relative who they're supporting.
At the workplace, a large Microsoft shop is buying a complex package of products and services that I can't even identify all of the pieces of. There's Microsoft stuff on my work computer, and on my company supplied iPhone. I must sheepishly confess that it all just works.
For myself at home, my main computer related interest is programming, and a programmer can live a platform-independent life if they want to. This is what I advocate, above and beyond my actual platform preference.
What I suggest to friends if they're thinking of switching (to Linux, Mac, Chrome) is: First, achieve platform-independence by finding the tools that work across OS's. Get up to speed on those tools. Second, switch platforms. That way, you're 99% up to speed before you even switch.
Can confirm, already use Linux more than 5 years. Never did touching desktop version of libre doc, google doc is better. Opened libre calc sometimes to open local csvs, otherwise google sheet for more advanced use case.
Online tools are already advanced enough for most use case
a whole bunch of older pcs are going to be completely useless or quickly become virus machines next year when windows 10 hits end of life and windows 11 won't support the intel 7x00 series of chips. A lot of people are going to be making the decision what computer to get next.
This! I've switched to Raspberry Pi OS on a Pi 5 now that a hat lets me use an m.2 SSD drive to boot the OS off of. It's a game changer for web surfing and email. It's also pretty quick for file transfers of music and video.
As for my traditional Windows 10 machine that I game on, in the near future I'll be switching to the best Linux OS for Steam gaming. Two things made me mad enough to change: Win 11 with it's ads and other BS and I'm tired of transfer of data problems relating to both USB-3 and C plug-ins. I've had some experience with Linux, so the transition isn't a problem.
Switched to Linux in Windows' "golden age" - XP. Never looked back. There's one thing that reminds me that old Windows - cloud providers. Their configuration in UI looks a lot like group policies on Windows. Every time I have to deal with those IAM permissions in Google Cloud I get flashbacks, except now the UI is much slower
The issue is the people switching are the kinds of people who set up family computers and recommend things to others. So there is this huge hidden knock on effect of people going from pro-windows to nutrual or recommending a different os.
In the simplist terms, it's a similar reason youtube allows users with ad blockers, those people with ad blockers will still share videos to people without ad blockers.
Very short-sighted move from Microsoft. All of this gain now from ad revenue but long-term damage to the brand.
Windows is the SF of operating systems. I first moved to SF because I wanted to be there, not because it had a job for me. It was amazing. Regular people lived there and did interesting things and raised the next generation. You could enjoy the city because it was a city built for people and that was amazing. Then tech completely took over. I noticed my friends that had kids move first. They were the canaries in the coal mine. The city stooped being a place that made people want to put roots down, they were just there because of the job, so people have stopped moving there and started moving away. When you can work from anywhere why work in a place you don't want to be? I became one of the people that left and I don't regret it, unfortunately.
Microsoft and their operating systems are exactly the same. I started using MS operating systems with DOS 2.0. I was hooked. Every new version really was an upgrade. I couldn't wait for each new release because they were all amazing and truly 'upgrades'. I used their stuff because it was good, not because I had to. Slowly however things started to change. Each new 'upgrade' came with things that didn't help and didn't improve. One day I realized they were upgrades, just not upgrades targeted at me. My machine slowly but surely became less and less mine. Eventually I couldn't take it anymore and jumped on the Linux bandwagon. The last two machines I have purchased haven't even made it to the windows startup screen before I wiped them and, just like SF, you would have to pay me a lot of money to move back.
I hope SF and Microsoft learn a lesson from this: If you aren't raising the next generation because they love your product then you are creating a group of people that will leave as soon as they get the chance.
Thank you, but I specifically mean the windows XP alt tabbing era. Pressing alt tab should always go back to the previous window in focus, not the previous app. This one looks app-based too, sadly.
Pressing alt tab tab should go back two windows of focus, and alt tab tab tab should be three, etc. It was the best feature and now I regularly lose vim windows and terminals because switching windows seems to ruin the tabbing order. It’s never history-based anymore.
Maybe I was too quick to judge based on the splash screen.
Pop quiz: you click on a chrome window, then a terminal window A, then a different terminal window B. Does pressing alt-tab-tab take you back to the exact same chrome window?
The idea is that it’s a history-based list of active windows. So each time you press tab while holding alt, it goes one further into history. It’s immensely helpful for maintaining context when you’re switching between four different apps during a dev session.
But, I appreciate the recommendation. I’ll test drive it tomorrow.
This is how alt-tabbing works on modern Windows as well, so I'm not sure why you've singled out XP. It wasn't the earliest one to implement it either - I'm pretty sure 2000 did it.
I don't have my macOS device on hand right now, but I'm almost certain that the AltTab app replicates that behavior. Or, at the very least, it throws out the incredibly annoying obsession that macOS has on separating switching between applications and switching between windows of one application.
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[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 310 ms ] threadBoth nixOS and Guix are different to 'regular' distros in the way that they are declarative: there is a file that describes the full OS: every user, every package, every system service, where the bootloader goes and so on. The main idea is that you can take that file, nuke your hard disk, reuse it and you'll have the same OS byte by byte. This concept of reproducibility is not only very comfortable, but has profound ramifications in security (you know no compiler or library has been tampered with malware) or science.
But it goes deeper: Since the OS is described by a single file you can roll back to a previous version if your file is hosted on git (both OS manage this transparently without the need of a VCS). Users can have their own 'local copy' of that file with their own programs, including their own libraries with different versions. You can have different files as 'profiles' (one for work, one for personal projects, one for gaming) you can activate at any time when you want to switch tasks, or you can try your friend configuration on a chroot or isolated environment on top of your own system.
The main difference between nixOS and Guix is that guix uses guile scheme as configuration language for that particular file. I have plenty of '(packages (if is-laptop acpi)...)' entry on my own files.
guix shell is just a way to create a temporary environment to try something quick without polluting my OS. For instance, if I want to do some hacking on python2 I would do 'guix shell python2' and it will open a shell for me with python2 without changing my python3 binary and python3 libraries on my main system.
BTW you don't even have to change your whole system, both nix and guix can be installed on top of 'regular' distros (google 'guix foreign distro', which is the way I manage my rasperry pis).
There is way more than all that, I definitely encourage everyone to give it a try, it's a mind bending new way to use a OS.
If you want to "profoundly" improve security, you verify the whole install against a cryptographic hash on every boot, and you refuse to boot if the verification fails, and you keep the hashes in tamper-proof hardware -- like Android and ChromeOS do, but no other Linux distro does except for a distro specialized for cloud servers called Bottlerocket that is poor in resources (e.g., attention from developers).
NixOS's security is pretty poor even compared to the low standard of popular Linux distros because although it does incorporate one very good idea (and it is not reproducibility -- its refraining from giving packages as much ambient authority most OSes give them), security is mostly about paying attention to dozens of boring details, which the NixOS project does not care about as much as for example Fedora does. E.g., here is the project not caring about supply chain integrity: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36268776.
Another example: if you install Google Chrome onto Fedora the standard way (namely, dnf install google-chrome-stable) it points your Fedora install to an RPM repo hosted by Google, so that from then on, even if everyone in charge of the Fedora servers lost their minds, your Fedora install would continue to keep your browser up-to-date in a very timely manner (because it has been configured to look directly to Google's servers for updates, and Google's Chrome team is well-paid and has a stellar reputation for security and in particular for timely delivery of security updates). In contrast, when I installed NixOS's Chrome package, it arranged things so that every time I updated my NixOS install (using nixos-rebuild IIRC) it would look to NixOS's servers, so the security of my browser (and the browser is the source of many, many security vulnerabilities) depends on a NixOS maintainer getting the update from Google, then providing it to me. But you see, the Fedora way of handling that package has a single point of failure (namely, Google) whereas the way NixOS chose has two points (namely, Google and a NixOS maintainer who is probably a volunteer and might quit or die at any time -- and the NixOS project has not system in place to respond to that event in a timely manner if my experience with the NixOS project is any indication).
NixOS's machinery for updating packages is very flexible, so I'm sure it would've been pretty easy to arrange for NixOS's Chrome package to work the way Fedora's does, but the relevant decision maker at NixOS simply didn't think of it. But security consists in large part in paying attention to details like that. ADDED. Actually, now that I think of it, the Chrome project's servers provide only RPMs and DEBs, so for NixOS's maintainer of the Chrome package to handle updates to Chrome the way Fedora does would require that the installation of the Chrome package causes (as part of dependency satisfaction) the installation of RPM or dpkg and maybe parts of dnf or apt (so that later on, the nixos-rebuild command can look for updates on Google's servers), so it is not as easy as I was envisioning when I wrote that "it would've been pretty easy". (Still, that is probably how I would do if I were the NixOS maintainer.)
(quick edit) Guix packages are basically .scm (scheme) files on git, so the fedora/nix example does not apply either. Every file can be opened and inspected, most of them are basically a git clone + checking a hash. You can decide to use substitutes (binaries) or no, and substitutes are usually similar byte by byte across systems. As an example, this is the guix config for installing CRIU: https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/guix.git/tree/gnu/packages...
Given said that, I am ready to spend some of my funemployment time installing and using nix as my daily driver for a few months, so I will have more info and first hand knowledge of all that.
Open Source isn't challenge-free, but it's much closer to the chess experience that I seek than the poker experience of proprietary alternatives.
Not stashed away in some obscure, poker-style location.
I don’t mind them trying. But don’t keep asking, or ask again on every update, or badge settings because I haven’t my added to my wallet, or keep telling me how much better a family plan is when I’m single. It’s not better, it’s a waste of money.
I can’t imagine switching off macOS/iOS. I don’t want Linux or Windows. But I’m getting less happy every year.
It's an insanely tiny very low power thing that was almost as cheap as I could get. I just needed a Windows PC around and it fit my needs. Totally fine for basic stuff.
But wow. I’ve seen articles about how it was getting worse, new things MS has done, pulled back on, and put in later.
I was used to all the stupid advertisement stickers that have been there forever. Bing desktop images I’ve seen before and is a nice default IMO.
But the big ads in the start menu? And the thing of the day on the search bar? Candy Crush and other crap? CONSTANT OneDrive and Office 365 nagging? Are you sure you didn’t mean Edge this time? Really?
I’d heard of it all but it’s so comically over the top in person. And takes a while to find out how to disable.
My last personal PC was XP Pro in the early 2000s. I’ve used a number of work PCs with newer versions but they were all locked down with group policy so none of that appeared.
Windows is a self parody at this point. I know it’s a very good OS technically. But wow they found out how to ruin it.
There were system settings for the start menu things and the search bar. All the preloaded crud like Candy Crush, which I got the impression was more of a placeholder(?), was removed easily enough through the add/remove software panel. There was a preference somewhere to get Edge to shut up too.
I think I might’ve had to Google something to find one setting. None of it was really too bad. It’s just a bunch of wasted time that I shouldn’t have had to deal with.
And it feels like the OneDrive pop-up comes back every once in a while after a system update. But that’s easily dismissed too.
Nothing came from my OEM, it was just a bog standard Windows install. All the junk comes with windows. As the user, none of this was for me.
I view some of the stuff Apple does as an attempt to help me by selling me something, though not all of it. I don’t want it to happen. It’s annoying. But it somehow feels more appropriate than what Windows does.
Preloading Candy Crush? I mean come on.
It’s the ads for services or upgrades to service plans or new features of services that I don’t care about that I hate.
IAPs ruined the App Store, services are ruining the OSes.
* Cortana. Nobody should have been forced to use a modern version of Clippy, but at the OS level, and one named after a video game (AI) character. It made the whole OS feel like a joke - to me, at least.
* Tricking/forcing people to sign in with Microsoft/Outlook credentials, so their Windows account would now be tied to MS online credentials.
* Tricking/forcing users to upgrade into Windows 10. This happened to countless people, including to someone in my family.
* Displaying literal ads in the Start Menu
I left the MS Windows ecosystem in around 2001, did not really use XP or 7. I was on various linux distros until 2015- and for my needs at the time they were great! I used mostly desktops (power management/sleep not a big issue) and did not have to interop with "regular" users using MS Office, etc. I did some development, and in this area Linux excelled. I also had time to tweak and twiddle until things worked well.
2015 - 2021 I was on Mac OS. It was an improvement over Linux in several ways- mobile HW was great, sleep no problem, and I could interoperate. MacOS is great in so many ways (and as mentioned Apple HW is generally top-notch), but not perfect. For example, they don't really want you running "unapproved" (unsigned) software, and I understand network is needed to check if the software is approved: https://appleinsider.com/inside/macos/tips/how-to-launch-any... . Together with the fact that I had very little HW control (can't upgrade or replace parts myself on Macbooks especially) and that Apple make their stuff software pretty "sticky" (hard to get your data out) I ended my run using MacOS as my primary computer.
So now I am on MS Windows again, like the old days. It has the issues indicated in the article for sure- but I do feel a little more control than MacOS, strangely. Its easy, it mostly works and gets out of the way, and I can still upgrade RAM etc (for now, anyway- ARM PCs might be more like current MacBooks and could change this). Dev is better than in the past, and interop is no problem. The main reason I am on Windows is backward comparability. As I have aged, I value being able to use old things- and on this MS Windows is unmatched in my experience. I will see how long I last before the next leap ;-)
Meanwhile, Linux may be far more open, but a lot of hardware might not work at 100% feature parity (e.g. various peripherals, especially anything bluetooth).
It's also true that the interop situation has gotten far better on Windows. WSL works very well. But I'd also say that all 3 main OSs have much better interop than in the past. For example, gaming on Linux is more than viable, thanks to Valve. Finally, The Browser has become an OS of its own. And Electron-based apps like VSCode, Discord, and many others, are multiplatform.
Personally, I find all the 3 of the main OSs to be very compelling and impressive. They each have their own set of pros and cons. For someone who just wants things to work, MacOS is a great choice - but one that feels quite limiting (but some people feel a sense of freedom in that, actually). Windows also works very well in that regard. It's just that for many, it feels like Microsoft is treating us Windows-folk as dumb cattle and that they are taking our loyalty for granted. Meanwhile, Linux.. is hard to define. It's a lot of things and it's a constantly moving target. For me, I have found Linux on the desktop to have the most pain points. Not ones that I cannot manage or work around, but ones I'd rather not have to deal with.
CAD programs, e.g. SolidWorks, Alibre, SketchUp, eDrawings, Fusion 360? Windows.
CAM programs, e.g. BobCAM, MeshCAM, MasterCAM? Windows.
Office? Windows (LibreOffice is not a functional replacement - you can’t risk having documents being sent to clients looking bad).
FileMaker, Act! Pro, other desktop databases? Windows.
Router control software, e.g. Mach3, Mach4, UCCNC? Windows.
Adobe anything (GIMP is worse than a joke)? Or, if you don’t like Adobe, Affinity? Windows.
No shortage of Windows and Mac only programs in a business. Other than MasterCAM, my family uses or has used every piece of software I just listed in our small business. Linux is not an option; only for home hobbyist use, maybe. If you could get by with a Chromebook, Linux will work for you, otherwise it probably won’t. (This might sound like a slam, but remember Steam also runs on Chromebooks now.)
I have a barebones 'just installed' win10 image that I use to clone a new VM for each new app I add. Solidworks, NX, Cadence, Altium and ISE all work fine with no problems because of 3d acceleration or such.
Admitably my impetus for this was conflicting FlexLM emulators cough, but there's no reason it can't work just as a way of keeping things organised and clean on a host OS that isn't windows.
Emphatically, no. Running CAM, or CAD software, in a VM, is almost unusably slow with any large models. I’ve tried. It’s not fun to zoom through a large model at 5 FPS. You need to have GPU passthrough, and even though you can make that work, it’s very risky (hardly a stable sane thing to build a business on), and you’re just running Windows again, but worse. We need GPUs in Windows already (primarily NVIDIA) just to keep the CAD from being too slow, and to keep our rendering options open.
Even if it worked brilliantly in a VM (which it doesn’t), why would I double my operating systems and run them simultaneously? That’s just begging for compatibility issues, frustration, and defeats the point of avoiding Windows entirely. Any benefits for avoiding Windows are almost completely negated.
I would consider Wine instead, or Proton. It may work really well with some software, but may have trouble with other software.
Besides the design stuff, the entire manufacturing industry is dependent on Microsoft. There are thousands -- probably hundreds of thousands -- of air-gapped NT4 machines in factories running very specific but unsupported for 20 years software, for example. All the big MES systems, test software, and various tooling to run factories are all designed for Windows only.
Some of that software, especially for controlling specific hardware, can even be DOS software.
The hardware can be reliable and expensive; software support, long unavailable.
So I have some terrible news for you about what happens if your client has an older version of Office than you do...
They run on mac
> Office? Windows (LibreOffice is not a functional replacement - you can’t risk having documents being sent to clients looking bad).
What kind of documents are you sending to clients? In my experience I would only share PDFs 99% of the time. So is your concern that the PDF will look unprofessional or that you need to send .docx or .xlsx or .pptx files to clients?
Part of me wonders if all this advertisement and service hawking is related to a fear of massive market size reduction, overall.
"We're getting things ready", reboot, create a Microsoft account, 10 data sharing settings to turn off, "almost ready..."
Iirc, a MacBook is ready to use without any updates.
Do you want to give this app access to downloads? To desktop? To microphone? What about this app? Sign in to iCloud. Sign in again. Maybe this time? Nope, sign in to iCloud.
I’ve picked my poison, and it’s Apple, but it’s far from perfect.
They’re obnoxious. I’m getting more annoyed with MacOS too for that and other reasons mostly around services.
But you can start using it without OS updates.
Or Microsoft's?
Or Apple's?
Suggest reading up on the history of personal computing, and then ask yourself if this is how it was supposed to go. At this point, even Mac and Linux users are starting to feel the loving embrace of their OS vendors' paternalism.
> So it was necessary to destroy the product in order to save its users.
I fail to see how an updated OS is a destroyed product.
I don't think you want to go there, broheim. Wait'll you hear my opinion of how "safe" your computer is, and whether it should be allowed on a network.
I fail to see how an updated OS is a destroyed product.
A personal computer, along with its operating system, should do what its owner tells it to do.
That was kind of the original idea, anyway.
I don’t have a perfect solution, but I also don’t have billions in the bank and lots of employees tasked to the issue.
One popup with a list of apps and their permissions would at least be a one stop shop, but even that wouldn’t be great on a new machine setup as your apps aren’t all there yet.
The only time it’s mandatory is if you are restoring from a back up or transferring from another computer with a newer operating system.
So if your old machine was on 10.20.1 but your new machine is 10.19.4 because that was the newest when it was put in box then you’ll have to update it first.
The Macbook's setup is definitely a bit faster than Windows, but it's not way faster. I still had to turn off a lot of the things it suggests, and I still was prompted to update the OS. However, the Macbook was less pushy and I felt the features at least seemed to offer some user value.
Pretty sure some vendors update phones in the store to avoid bothering the customer with it. Seems like a lot of effort to boot the full inventory's amount of phones every time there's a security patch only so people don't have to download a diff on first launch (edit: found it https://www.macrumors.com/2024/03/27/what-new-machine-to-upd...)
The Debian "app" gives me access to apt and anything that has an ARM build, which is nearly everything. Sometimes I write code on it, like a PoC to brute force a numeric parking lot voucher was the most recent instance, but most commonly I use qalc (best calculator ever, also use it on desktop) and sshd to remotely access photos/Screenshots. It used to be more featureful and you could run things like wavemon and aircrack, but selinux restrictions have made that a thing of the past. Surely it's possible to adjust, but I haven't invested the time in finding out how yet
You're immediately hit with apps you can't uninstall (Edge) too.
Fwiw, CS2 ran away smoother for me on Kubuntu than it does on Win11 (same hardware). I wasn't expecting that.
Bonus points: I’m having fun with my computer again!
I have been multi booting for 20 years, preferring Linux distributions the whole time, but other OSes when I want to use them.
I recently started using a dedicated Windows system for gaming and other Windows favored tasks. I am running a KVM switch, using AMD Graphics on a Linux system and Nvidia on this Windows system. I also have a macOS system, that I use as needed.
I do this with mobile devices as well. It doesn't seem worth it to squabble over choosing a path.
For me, there are evenings when I am hacking away on a hobby project for 2 or 3 hours. Then suddenly just go, 'I wanna just veg out for another 2 hours then go to bed.' When I'm in that mood, I don't even want to be bothered changing machines. Just hit the steam icon and veg. Thats also bout the only time I end up gaming though, haha.
Last time I dual booted though, I remember why I didn't for along time. Did a Windows update, windows rebooted my computer and it did something with grub and I couldn't easily boot into linux anymore.
But hardware is more affordable than ever (unless you want a really powerful GPU). What's worse is that you have to separate the tasks between OSes, you can't easily have a default computer for everything, with everything relevant locally available. It's fine if you keep Windows for gaming, and want gaming to be explicitly separate. It's harder if you need Windows for graphics / video, or for CAD/CAM, or for Office. Having important related bits and software on another box may be a hassle.
At least back when win10 was new, Proton is good enough that I haven't needed Windows in a good few years.
Put all your fun things on one OS (or user account), and all your business stuff on another (possibly blocking distractions via hosts or firewall rules); and you've added a bunch of friction to switching from work to play. Not that it can't be done, but it needs to be a deliberate choice and you can't just bounce between them.
I don't really have a set work schedule, so it's normal for me to jump between a work context and a play context. It's much easier to do by very rarely rebooting my computer (once or twice a month), so I can always pick up where I left off. The regularly scheduled update meetings do a good enough job of keeping procrastination in check.
[1] Doesn't work for games requiring kernel-mode anti-cheat.
[2] https://looking-glass.io/ to use both GPUs on the same monitor.
Everything else works well on Linux. Gaming included. I've run Linux many years, in fact.
But Capture One and Lightroom are not available over there, which is what draws me back to MacOS. Of course I could just use darktable. Have done that for several years. But at the end of the day, I just prefer Capture One, and that's enough reason for me to switch my OS.
The few I had a pleasure of using have a really good browser and mobile app support. The only problem I ran into is that sometimes mobile apps refuse to run on rooted Android devices.
The browser will only ever log in to one bank per tab, and with different UI per bank. If you have more than one bank, it becomes a hassle quite quickly.
Gaming is what kept a lot of people on windows over the years, but thanks to valve and the proton team, Linux gaming works as well as Windows gaming (and some people say better than — I certainly don’t have to deal with all the crap Microsoft tries to put into windows).
Some people refuse to use Linux because they’re afraid of having to tinker with it, but that hasn’t been my experience in over a decade. Things have generally just worked for me.
AoE2:DE is one example of incompatibility. Simple game (by modern standards) with no advanced anticheat.
It's been a few months since I played but the only thing that doesn't work is Xbox login. I needed to download a DLL to get multiplayer working, which I agree isn't really userfriendly, but compared to the early Wine days Proton is a walk in the park.
What I do miss a bit is Capturage, apparently it's really hard to make it work in Proton.
It's even been less troublesome than when I used to use AMD GPUs, where IIRC accelerated graphics drivers and the ROCm drivers had some sort of conflict unless installed a certain way (a few years ago now, my last AMD card was a 5700xt).
This is true, but have also improved substantially in the last year or so.
I haven't tried that game, but I know for a fact that Fallout 4 works quite well, and it -- like Skyrim -- has a gold status on protondb.
There were also some rendering issues, but I could let that slide given my GPU is ~10 years old.
No idea where that came from but it's not the case.
The only problems I’ve had are that the intro video and menu for supreme commander forged alliance runs at very low frame rate (but the actual game runs without problems), and that Gothic 3 was very glitchy on steam deck. Everything else I’ve tried ran without issue.
That monitor, incidentally, is a 25-inch former iMac. I gutted it after it suffered the widespread burned-out-GPU problem that afflicted many (most?) Macs of circa-2010 vintage, and put an LCD driver board in it.
- I download games from gog via linux and put them on an NTFS partition
- I boot windows 11 in a proxmox VM with passthrough gpu + usb controller for sound
- I mount NTFS partition in VM, install and run games
- my windows 11 install has no network device
- tbh there was a windows defender nag, but I managed to disable it.
I've been wondering if I can do something similar for steam, but haven't touched my steam login in 5+ years. I think you can use a proxy for steam.
The absurdity being the creation of an enterprise environment to use enterprise tools to shape a personal computer into something that closely resembles an experience you used to get out of the box 15 years ago.
To build a castle so as not to be treated like livestock.
Every time I search on the start menu there is a web search, impossible to turn off. How is that acceptable?
I install Edge Beta to test something, and the I uninstall it. All of the sudden my search provider in my normal Edge is reset.
And the nagging everywhere. No I don't want 'back-up' my files (OneDrive is not backup, it's sync). And I don't want to be reminded later. I don't want to be reminded ever. All this fuzzy language makes me feel like I'm dealing with a kindergarden teacher addressing his/her pupils.
It's not my computer any more.
Oh, I update a driver. And 2 days later Windows installs an older version. Since when is 6.6.1.40 better than 6.6.1.72? Why would you do that?
Ubuntu at least asks if you want to proceed with a package update, you can look at the changelog to see what the update is about, and you can mark packages to be on hold and skipped for updates.
Which is why I have stopped recommending Ubuntu.
Leave computer idle windows rolls it back in the night to a driver from 2021.
Disabling autoupdates via Group Policy is supported and won't bork anything.
No one should have to resort to registry hacking or the many scripts or hacks available to regain control over basic UX, privacy, or usability selections. It is absolutely absurd.
Don't get me wrong, I'm a Linux lover and user, but from an outside perspective Windows registry (a central, structured database of configuration for everything) looks easier.
The good thing is that explanations is often a `man` command away, and the location of these files is often listed in the same place. Also general computing is an expert subject. You may as well have a kiosk if you start hiding away capabilities. The expectation to drop to a terminal is often because the terminal is the fastest way to get things done.
You can scroll, use pages, tabs, nested menus, guided wizards, Chrome or VS code style searchable settings lists, buttons which appear or disappear dynamically when necessary.
> where on Windows for years (I have no experience with its new shells) many people would have to load Office, import the text, write a macro, and export back the text.
If you can assume office, why can’t you assume gvim or any other text editor with a gui? And why is text editing your yardstick? At least you can do that with a gui somehow, image processing you can’t do with a cli - yes you can write the code for ffmpeg or graphviz but you can’t see the result without a graphic interface.
Registry hacking, with all it's resets and duplicate keys is hard to backup, constantly reverts ( because m$ doesn't believe it to be user editable) and is a pain in the ass to back up and restore.
Oh yes, and is your registry value supposed to be a dword, or something else? No way to tell.
I would love a configuration system with centralized database and centralized documentation, but no OS currently seems to be able to achieve that, and Windows' missing documentation appears even worse than obscure but documented config files.
With Windows you have to patch it through the registry (which is not bsckupable config files) to remove ads and other annoying "features".
So the out-of-the-box experience is better with Linux. My mom even understands Linux GUIs better these days than Windows, it's just less bloat and distraction. And for basic apps you don't have to configure anything on the CLI. I recently got a Raspberry PI for my parents to use as a HTPC, installed some basic apps on it, and they can just use it like that.
What config files have you found outside of `/etc` and `~/.config`?
~/.gitconfig, ~/.bashrc, ~/.bash_profile, ~/.vimrc
~/.ssh/config
~/.gnupg/gpg.conf, ~/.gnupg/gpg-agent.conf
> ~/.ssh/config
> ~/.gnupg/gpg.conf, ~/.gnupg/gpg-agent.conf
None of those settings are going to be edited by a non-technical human, even on Windows.
OTOH, all of those are easier to edit in their respective files than via a registry hack.
[1] https://knowledge.broadcom.com/external/article/8596/warning...
Now too, for normal computer users who don't want to tweak their operating system and only need basic utilities, and are able to read and follow simple instructions, Linux has long become way more accessible than Windows.
To be frank, I think the only battle-tested reliable ways to make a config language or a set of command line flags easier to use is good, complete documentation, though little things like integration with tab-completion or syntax highlighting can often go a long way too. These exist in almost any commonly used software found on a linux distro and are more than enough for someone willing to actually try stuff, which describes most of the people who can navigate doing anything that's not a default behavior of any OS anyway. Most people seem to have what I can only describe as learned helplessness about computers doing things they don't expect, but to be honest if you put people in an environment where they are motivated and don't feel afraid to mess up (which most educational contexts fail miserably at, both in terms of social norms and systemic incentives), most will actually start to figure stuff out a lot quicker than they expect themselves to. A small portion won't, and unfortunately most social environments are either too rushed or too high-pressure to facilitate this kind of exploration. But if we just accept that people are "non-technical" in the sense of "can't try anything remotely new in order to fix their computer", the only real way to satisfy those users is going to be keeping a system they already know how to use the same, which companies are simply not willing to do
To me, the main difference between open (like linux distros, but there are others) and closed computer operating systems is that the former tends not to tell you "Sit tight and we'll send a company-certified adult to help you" (or sometimes "This is not allowed", or "You need to pay extra for that now"), and the latter, increasingly, wherever possible, makes these the only options available
I am not sure why this is. My best guess is it unpleasant to use because now you have two trees. only one has all the nice tooling and the other is sort of second class and can only be accessed via special mechanisms.
1. it was portable 2. it was well documented ( I absolutely hated that I was finding out about some magical way of enabling something by putting magic string somewhere from a magazine ) -- all those options should be available for me to peruse. I am not even suggesting third party software, just Windows.
But I agree, somehow this idea seems better on paper than in practice.
…most of which are backed by a man file. I’ll take that over the registry any day.
The big advantage of this is that you can take your local config files and take it to other system. Can you do that with the Windows registry? Ironically, the only way to port settings in Windows is to have a .reg script and execute it, the thing you critisize.
And the Windows registry might be a single centralized config file, but config values are scattered through all the tree, and usually undocumented. E.g. this is a commonly recomended tweak:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop] "UserPreferencesMask"=hex(2):90,12,03,80,10,00,00,00
Can you tell what it does?
Back around 2003 I read in local "Linux Magazine" about some project that tried bringing kind of a registry equivalent to Linux world. Sadly these were Internet caffee times so it was hard to track projects, so I really don't know what happen to it. The closest thing that resembles that idea is dconf.
With Windows nowadays you do all this tweaking or juggling within registry/group policy editor to protect yourself (and of course you do that if you care - majority of people don't) while with Linux I'd say it's more a matter of fine-tuning your distro of choice to your needs.
Linux alternatively uses config files directly meant to be altered by the end user. It's less user-friendly, but better than the registry.
The real crime is having a registry in the first place instead of a .config directory.
Only system config files. I know of no package manager that scans config files in users' home dirs.
Tell that to UX developers. It is the same in web browsers.
Same as chrome with flags.
Good UX means nowadays eat or die.
Like if some drastic new search doesn't appear within a couple years we are talking IT not being able to fix problems anymore
Works well to disable various telemetry, bloat and other baddies.
I shouldn't have to run on a privacy treadmill to stay in the same place.
as far as powershell scripts; i cant say i am a fan (i do like the potential targeting of offline machines with something like the mentioned website) - but my favorite to date is still: https://github.com/hellzerg/optimizer/
edit: if you end up trying out hellzerg's optimizer: do know that reboot button, once clicked, reboots right meow
Linux software is not immune to frustrating changes
So yeah, Linux is not a refuge either.
I only use Windows as a game launcher (and I’m still on Windows 10), I don’t understand why anyone would need it anymore except games.
I purchased Alibre Atom3d because it was the only non-subscription affordable package I could find, but it's quite disappointing and won't run in wine anyway due to the licensing rootkit it uses. So I end up using one of the above linux capable tools, depending on the needs of the model. Each one has its strengths and weaknesses and none is satisfying overall. I reach for OnShape for any design that is going to be open source, because it is a pleasure to use (even though it is web-based), but I don't make enough money from CAD to pay for a $1500 annual subscription.
I tried Fusion under Wine and it didn't really work. I haven't tried NX or Solidworks in the last few years.
Thanks to Valve/Steam and Heroic (Epic Store client), and a few other handy tools including Valve's Proton (WINE fork) I haven't even needed Windows for games for ages now. I can live without the small handful of Linux-hostile Windows-only games that still won't run due to draconian DRM/AntiCheat, as the vast majority of my Steam library is "Click 'Play' and they just work", for Windows games and the many native Linux games I also have. Same for more'n half of the games I have on Epic (all from their freebie giveaways). The ones that don't work I can live without. Every other thing I want to do on my PC I've found native Linux software for that more than handles the task.
Yes, it limits available jobs and probably doesn't pay any top salaries. But better than selling myself to people I don't respect.
That devs at a company use Windows doesn't mean they're forced to. Often it just means the designers also work on Windows.
Most designers use Figma these days, which has clients for Windows and macOS, and can be used fully in a web browser as well.
In my experience of the rise of macOS among developers, the biggest driving force was mobile app development and mobile web development because Apple refused to provide first party developer tools or emulators usable on other operating systems and made it intentionally difficult to run macOS on non-Apple hardware or in a VM. Previously macOS was largely associated with designers, not developers. This move also started blurring the lines more with designers making the move to development and (to a smaller degree) vice versa.
Development across the board is better on a mac for some / many people.
And you're probably correct that Adobe has a larger share overall, but I would highly doubt that Illustrator or XD are being used more than Figma for UI design these days. Even less so, Photoshop, since it's a raster tool. Adobe was about ready to phase out XD when they were getting ready to purchase Figma.
Figma is free starting off, and their basic plans are extremely affordable compared to anything Adobe offers.
That being said, at a certain scale or type of company centralized management, software support, and security risks mean "allowing" random people to run their own OS becomes difficult and risky. Lots of large older companies probably have proprietary software, too (thankfully more of this is becoming web based).
Yes, in theory linux is more secure and anybody who would want to use it is probably capable of taking care of themselves, but it is probably (at large companies) corporate lawyers and CISOs ruining the fun. And linux can have its own risks and dedicating a team to support (from a security perspective) them isn't economical for the what would be very small user base. Ye old big bank can't and arguably shouldn't allow it without an otherwise good reason.
Another user commented about how it's unreasonable to ask them to run CAD software in a VM, but this is exactly what (some? many?) companies ask programmers to do. It's especially goofy if it's a software company where that development is their core business.
Basically there's no alternative to the Surface Pro or the Asus' Z13 (or even X13), or Lenovo's dual screen or tablet lines that works with Linux.
Incidentally these form factors also doesn't come to macs either.
Apple Silicon has the power envelope advantage, Intel and AMD chips remain faster for those who can deal with the power consumption (under lock when longer battery is really needed, and either be plugged or have a backup battery when going full throttle)
Z13: until very recently, BIOS bug that made Linux not recognize the sound chip
Is that different from the Microsoft engineers you're friends with?
#1: Apple locks you into their ecosystem, and feels even creepier than MS. #2: The Linux distros I've used are designed in a way so you shouldn't have to use the CLI and sudo for normal tasks, but you end up having to anyway in practice. It's a combination of annoying, and I, sooner-or-later, end up in a state where the system is "totaled"; easier to do a clean install than get it working again after the wrong CLI C+P broke something important.
just off the top of my head:
- whoopsie - uploads crashes to canonical
- motd - telemetry and nags
- forced automatic updates
- snaps and other features lots of people don't want, but can't be disabled
- removing the ubuntu-advantage package disables most of the OS
etc..
e.g. I used to install qlplugins on every new macos device as our company bought them. Then one day Apple refused to run any 32-bit library despite the fact that 32 bit code still runs natively on x86-64 chips (this when everything still ran on x86-64 btw).
Designers still ask me: "Hey, how do I see the dimensions of this picture when pressing spacebar to preview it?" And I have to say: "Sorry, Apple said you can't do that anymore".
This is not the same as apple actively forcing you into their ecosystem. This is apple not supporting old technology.
64bit code is the extension, not the base case.
32bit (x86) code just straight up runs on an x86-64 (64-bit) processor.
It's an artificial limitation that just doesn't make sense, and it can also be worse for performance too.
> This is not the same as apple actively forcing you into their ecosystem.
No?
Apple prevents 32bit libraries from running. This effected almost all the common cross-platform layers from running on MacOS.
In a single action, Apple eliminated the libraries that Steam games on MacOS used. Games would now have to be recompiled and were pushed to be downloadable through the Mac App Store, giving Apple their 30% cut.
> This is apple not supporting old technology.
If it's old then apple shouldn't support it? By that logic, we shouldn't be using ints in our code, we should only use 64-bit quaternions.
There is a difference between old and outdated. 32bit code is old. 32bit code is not outdated.
YMMV, but this is what I used to disable web search on my Win 11 Pro workstation:
If gpedit.msc gives you unexpected results (I.e. policies just don’t seem to work) then do two things:
1. gpupdate /force 2. Download the latest ADMX templates; newer versions of Windows often introduce similarly-named - but still distinct - policy templates, for unwanted “features” in older versions, just like Start Menu web-search and forced-restarts for updates.
Lastly, while Windows LTSC is really what Microsoft should make available for everyone, don’t forget that Windows Server is still Windows LTSC too - so if you’re outside the MSDN Subscription Garden-of-Eden, you can still get Windows Server tricked-out as a real LTSC Workstation OS.
But even if you wait a few seconds before confirming, you'll get some garbage like Windows Photos, even though that's literally never been used.
At least the start menu got a lot faster with the net search disabled, but dropping usage based ordering is just another sign that Windows is NOT aimed at power users anymore.
https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/all/startm...
Not the GP, but, yup. Got fixed about 6 months later in a routine update.
Wasn't just the start menu, none of the icons are responsive in the taskbar either, so I couldn't change the volume, or switch networks, etc.[1]
Luckily, for me, Windows is used almost exclusively for unimportant stuff, like games, netflix/disneyplus/prime, surfing, etc.
[1] Not a major issue: all my game (and firefox) shortcuts are on the desktop, my headset has a volume knob and the wifi can be turned off/then on again using the laptop Fn-key (which I only did when it lost a connection once).
- the start menu opens but displays only an empty box.
- the start menu opens fine, but application search produces zero results, not even if I type the complete name of the program I ran yesterday.
Yes, when something like this happens I throw my hands up and declare it not-working today. At least Winkey+R works and my most-used programs are pinned to the taskbar anyway.
Most of the time it's fixed after a good night's sleep, other times Windows manages to pull itself together after a few hours. It's usually not a blocker for me, so I don't care enough to keep rebooting my machine in the vain hope that some user action might fix it. It's my employer's machine, so my employer's problem, not mine.
Though as an ex-Windows developer and hacker, I can tell you that NT is pretty modular and is designed to be “fucked” with in various different ways. Microsoft just like to ship defaults that are more favourable for their own business than your typical power user.
http://windowscentral.com/software-apps/windows-11/microsoft...
None of that stuff is a core component. The only reason any of that stuff is part of windows is because windows is a mature product. And all their desperate product managers need to add stupid features to windows to justify getting promoted.
Maybe I’m just old fashioned, but I don’t use windows because I want to be part of Microsoft’s software empire. I just want an OS that boots fast and lets me play video games. I don’t buy ram from the computer store so some tasteless bozo at Microsoft can justify their 6 figure salary.
I suppose the problem for many people is that advertisements are now "core components", when they really shouldn't be.
First-party upsells are now core components when they shouldn't be.
Third-party resellers are now core components when they shouldn't be.
Look, I get it: minesweeper is no longer free, and I'm okay with that. But FCOL, now the start button is ad-supported?
Leave it alone, that's why Windows is breaking for you. You keep fucking with core components. It's not Linux. You can't do that and not suffer consequences.
Windows works, and has always worked, just fine without onedrive. Microsoft just doesn’t want you to know that, because they are obsessed with the idea of upselling you on subscription based cloud services.
Unfortunately this is changing in the wrong direction for you or I.
Don’t leave us in the dark. Is that option being removed in the future?
And if you think OneDrive is essential for Windows then I’d suggest you do a little reading on the history of Microsoft and how they falsely claim dependencies on their own software stacks. Especially the court cases around debundling IE4 with Win98, and DR-DOS vs Windows 95.
It's akin to adding webview to your application to display a text file, even though you never would display an HTML file. It could have been done another way, but it wasn't.
So, yeah. If you actually know enough about libcs to want to get rid of glibc for a real reason, you can do it without breaking things. If you just want to go around and start deleting core system dependencies (which I think is very silly to put a cloud storage client in that bucket, regardless of the brand of cloud storage) without replacing them, then chaos seems to be the goal, and maybe order is the "broken" state for that machine :P
What exactly tells you that OneDrive a core component?
At least in Europe it did get a proper uninstall a while ago, which proves that it really was just there for promotion.
I'd gladly pay for a version of Windows that just leaves me alone. No I don't want Edge, Bing, a weather snippet, start search, Cortana, forced updates and a regular black pattern maze promising a somehow "improved experience" while trying to force metrics participation down my throat.
But I also don't want Linux, because many tools I rely on (plus games) won't run on it and I don't want a Mac because it's too opinionated. It feels exactly like being stuck in an abusive relationship at this point.
Yes. I don't want it, I don't need it, my OS does not need it to function, I never asked for it and (until the EU forced them to change this) I could not remove it.
> Bloatware really?
Yes, really. "Unwanted software included on a new computer or mobile device by the manufacturer". What in this definition does not apply, according to you?
> What does it bloat?
My OS, duh. It probably does not waste too many resources, as long as I don't engage with it, but the fact that it's there and it was shoved into my face on every explorer window is something worse than spam. It's basically the modern day equivalent of those shitty browser toolbars that some programs used to try to sneak install.
> You can make all of these things disappear
False. I was only able to fully disable OneDrive with registry hacks, before EU forced them to take it out.
So you are telling me, a Windows power user since 3.11, that I should just rtfm?
It's not about being able to turn certain things off, it's about the playbook that Microsoft is following these days, displaying malignant, almost petty behavior, like restoring the Edge shortcut on the desktop after updates.
It's about all the black patterns, like how you need to first go back a page in the post-update maze before you even get the option to continue without attaching a Microsoft account to your OS. Yes, I know that you can turn the maze off, but that option is hidden so far in the settings most users have no idea it even exists.
It's about the fact that they even dared to suggest putting ads in Explorer windows. It's about the clear sensation that my OS is no longer on my side. It's selling out, stabbing me in the back, turning rotten. It's a crying shame, but I may need to take it out to the back of the shed one of these days.
Have you considered that maybe not being able to use your computer how your want is precisely why this post exists?
A Dropbox clone is now 'core OS compinents'? That's just as much a valid criticism of Windows as anything else in this thread
Unfortunately just like the original post is anecdotal (I haven't had a machine fail to startup after an update since XP) not all anecdotes are born equal.
Interestingly, I don't see adverts myself, and I've never seen any at work. I -suspect- that's heavily regionalized.
Are there features I don't care for? Sure - I don't use OneDrive, I don't internet search from the Start bar, and I use Edge only occasionally. But it's not like somehow you -have- to use everything they ship.
I get it. An OS is personal. If you don't like Windows, use MacOS or Linux. All 3 have different approaches and one of them will fit you better than the others. Arguing over which is better or worse is like fighting over ice-cream flavors.
Yes there are work arounds, but that’s not for the average user. If I need to start tinkering and hack around in registries I might as well use Linux.
I haven't touched the registry, so that's not in play.
OneDrive doesn't nag me.
As I said earlier this is all anecdotal, clearly your experience is different to mine. This post is just anecdotes, not data, and I'm not suggesting my experience is your experience.
Why do you ask them to remind you? It sounds like you're already set up?
Unless you keep modifying the registry to disable it, you do, every time you do a search. You're just not using those results. But you're still getting the crappy experience of delayed actions when you just want the local results.
After I started administering fleets of Windows machines, I learned that if you don't fuck with it, it's fine!
If you need to make changes, use group policy. Don't like OneDrive? Don't use it! Uninstalling it is going to fuck things up.
Install updates as they come. "But it breaks things!" No it doesn't. It only does if you've fucked your registry to hell.
Just leave things alone and stop trying to customize it like a Linux box is my advice. It is what it is and will work fine if you use it the way it's intended.
OneDrive in the end is a component designed to exfiltrate documents. Wanting to remove a security vulnerability should not brick a device. Asking people to not use it is not a solution because you are prompted to send your documents over the internet to a third party every single time you save a new file.
1. It should not be uninstallable and MS screwed up by making it so.
2. The uninstaller is broken and MS screwed up by making it so.
Either path is MS’s fault, not the user’s.
KB4541335 entered the chat. If you haven't seen a broken vanilla update, you haven't been doing this long enough.
No, I absolutely want it off my computer. But then I'm not going to bother with weird registry scripts. Windows won't let me easily remove things, so I removed windows.
That may be true for work PCs, where my access is already restricted and heavily monitored, but I don't accept that for my personal machine.
<< It's because people fuck with the registry,
Hey, if MS wants to put configs somewhere else that is cool too. I don't understand how it is somehow expected that I don't touch the magic box ( because it is all held by rubber band and glue ). It is not some rinky-dink shop that made its first release. It is a global company. I simply expect more.
<< Install updates as they come.
This is for the user to decide. I am personally livid that windows machines update bios these days without any user interaction. If I ever saw retarded setting just waiting to cause a major issue, this is it.
<< Just leave things alone and stop trying to customize it like a Linux box
I use my Windows instance in a VM so I suppose I technically am leaving it mostly alone, but even then I chose to make some changes to registry to make the access easier for myself.
If I may get a little personal for a moment. I think your professional experience may be clouding your judgment in this case. I see it fairly often across a wide variety of professions, where various representatives consider client/user/buyer a hindrance of sorts that should make their lives easier 'by just doing X'. The thing is, the relationship is really not about making the representative's life easier.
This. Oh my god this.
well, recently, there was a compromised update to a software package and the recommendation was to roll back to a previous version. there are definite times when removing the latest not-so-greatest for a previous version is the best solution. there's no reason to lose the plot in your ranting. you just lose credibility in your arguments at that point
"The US federal Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency has issued a security advisory recommending that the affected devices should roll back to a previous uncompromised version."[0]
[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XZ_Utils_backdoor#Remediation
I'll note that Microsoft's PowerToys run solves this properly, just like MacOS's Spotlight and the built in search on most Linux desktops
Spotlight is Mac-only and uses Command-Space by default.
Though for now I've just turned that one off as I don't have obvious need for it and haven't looked at what else it might offer. I use PowerToys mainly for FancyZones and plain text paste.
The calculator app is open source so you can see the code here: https://github.com/microsoft/calculator
Debloat / Software Management: https://github.com/ChrisTitusTech/winutil
Command line software management (Scoop): https://pilabor.com/blog/2021/12/automate-windows-app-setup-...
Comparison (Scoop/Chocolatey/Win-Get): https://daftdev.blog/2024/04/01/chocolatey-vs-scoop-vs-winge...
I would also recommend starship (https://starship.rs/) for your Powershell, which is cross platform and therefore usable for all popular shells. Scoop can also install and manage nerd fonts:
Here is my starship.toml config:I'm also running a number of additional software on mac to make the experience more liveable (Alfred, scroll inverter, ice, rectangle, iterm,...). I think the big companies got to the point where they do the bare minimum for Gene Public to accept the useability, and leave the rest of us with our ### dangling to fill in the gap.
Probably something to do with maximizing profit and minimizing expense?
You can invert “natural scrolling” in the OS (System Preferences / System Settings).
Starship seems quite promising, this is the first time I'm seeing it. But I'm a bit confused on how it works, can you go into a bit more details?
Can I use starship+ps to get all Unix and git tools or should I stick with my existing workflow with windows git bash?
i'll admit the object vs text thing is annoying, i feel like bash is more straightforward there, but PS will let you do the same thing eventually.
Instead they re-invented the wheel. It's not a bad wheel, but the wheel is completely different than most people would expected to be and for POSIX enthusiast it just does not feel right.
With wsl or git bash you can do this but it feels slow and clunky most of the time.
And no, this is not a reason to leave an otherwise perfectly fine job behind.
older jobs let us put whatever on the laptops, and even had hardening scripts if we wanted to use linux. only approved linux was ubuntu, but you could slap mint or other derivatives in there and get away with it / not have concerns.
Or Fedora with KDE.
also, while the tool is nice, it needs admin permissions to work.
1) WSL2 is fantastic to work. Having various Linux images on my system is nice, this is huge for me alone
2) plenty of things work just better on windows like Docker
3) stuff like power tools is insanely useful
4) monitor, windows and desktop management is very well done in comparison to the mess of MacOS
5) I don't have all these issues the article describes. An automatic update has never broken my computer let alone ruined my flow
6) I don't see these ads, maybe in the start menu there are but I just never use it I have shortcuts
7) MacOS is way more annoying for me. I really dislike the filesystem, the window management, the fact that it will be always a third class citizen to Linux for software development (still have nightmares about installing Haskell and other languages on MacOS), the fact that it keeps resetting the output of my monitors at every sleep
I could provide other reasons but essentially it is way better for me and my use case than alternatives.
Unless I'm using a laptop, there I prefer MacOS for hardware.
And yes, Docker and most other development works better on Linux than any other OS.
Because WSL 2 satisfies all my Linux needs, and yes, it runs Docker perfectly and Windows is a better desktop OS, with more tools and software.
I used to run mint, ubuntu and some others up to Windows 10 I never considered a productive machine on my desktop but this has changed during the last years and Windows is an incredibly productive machine for software development.
Anyway I'm not trying to sell anybody Windows, was just answering a pointless comment like "I don't understand why would anybody use Windows", and I answered that there's plenty of reasons and tools for me, but I ain't gonna die if you force me on other OSs too.
What tools are you using on Windows specifically? Visual Studio, maybe?
I only ask because, other than workflow-specific tooling (Photoshop, etc), no one is creating non-Electron GUIs anymore, and with non-GUIs Windows used to be far behind for Windows-specific software.
This makes no sense. It’s a Linux virtual machine. You are not running docker on windows.
We’ve tried windows machines for docker and hit a ton of performance problems that just aren’t there on modern docker for mac.
2) This makes no sense to me. I've run docker on my mac with zero issues, except that the move to apple silicon has caused some disruption for cases where I build and push images locally (99% is done via CI/CD, but there are always exceptions) and I have to specify linux/amd64, which with some tooling is actually quite painful.
3) Yeah, powertools is nice.
4) This is absolutely true. The most recent macos announcement does add some better native window management, but all I really want is to be able to plug in my external monitors and have macos not switch them around half the time. It's frustrating as this used to work until around 2012 or so, and then just broke and was never fixed.
5) I've run into windows updates reverting settings or replacing defaults that point to third parties. To be fair, macos has sometimes done this, too. In particular it used to re-enable siri after every OS point release.
6) The ads are there and (with effort) can be removed. But it's the principle. Some product manager thought that this is a good idea - the good idea being something that's good for microsoft and not the user. This way of thinking can and does lead to rot by a thousand cuts. What's next enabling location tracking for the advertisers, thus making my laptops battery slightly worse? - google did this with android. This way of thinking has been killing google.
7) Most of this is repeating point 4 which I agree with, but its filesystem is just a posix filesystem. Mind you the finder has it's strengths and weaknesses - it took awhile to get used to, but it's never really gotten in my way. Calling macos third class for linux development is just plain incorrect. One of the main reasons MacOS took off when it did is because so many developers moved to it because they could use the same "unix/linux" tools more natively than windows, but didn't have to deal with linux on the desktop. Web developers in particular could easily run apache/php/etc as well as various design tools from Adobe or whoever. I've not seen too many complaints with most languages on it, but I could see more niche ones like Haskell being painful.
> I could provide other reasons but essentially it is way better for me and my use case than alternatives.
This is what ultimately matters. :-)
> Unless I'm using a laptop, there I prefer MacOS for hardware.
Hilariously for me, the one thing that's more painful than anything else when using windows is the poor quality of the bloody trackpads, even on more expensive/premium hardware (I haven't bought a windows laptop since before covid, so maybe this is better now?). Though a close second is having to deal with various pop-ups (from both windows and other software/utilities) that seem to vie for my attention.
https://www.oo-software.com/en/shutup10
and this free tool took care a lot of painful things in windows
I hate this as well, same with Spotlight on the Mac. Doesn’t it make sense to look for things on my own device first?
Anyway, here’s a solution I found for Win11:
## Disable web search from run menu
1. Select Start, type regedit.exe and select the Registry Editor to launch it. Accept the UAC prompt that is displayed.
2. Navigate to Computer\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Search
3. Right-click on Search and select New > Dword (32-bit) Value.
4. Name the value BingSearchEnabled.
5. Double-click on the new Dword and set data to 0.
From <https://www.ghacks.net/2021/11/26/how-to-turn-off-search-the...
That's not the exclusive problem to Microsoft - it happens all around us within the IT world. The corporations stopped acknowledging the permanent "No" anymore and the actual user choice. It's a plain harassment up until you give up and agree to what you get shoveled with.
Whenever I read comments regarding last two Windows versions and issues people had or have with these, or news about newest Microsoft "ideas" - I ask myself, where the hell are regulators?
If you want less government interference then less regulatory power will exist.
I love GDPR, yet so many complain about it for cookie banners, which are not even what the law requires: There Is No Cookie Banner Law (https://www.bitecode.dev/p/there-is-no-eu-cookie-banner-law)
You have just been lucky. Nothing more.
A classic case of it doesn't happen on _my computer_ so it must be a lie.
The only issue that is still here would be bing in start search but that's trivial to disable compared to the configurations I had to do on my linux desktops, so while it is bad and shouldn't be a thing I don't see it as a big issue when comparing to linux.
https://blogs.microsoft.com/eupolicy/2024/03/07/microsoft-dm...
Yes!? They existed long before GDPR was even passed.
The idea was good but the interpretation and implementation of this law failed - the banners, cookies aren't as permanent and universal as browser sending the header.
We have killed them. If a government tries to do anything against a company that isn't a perfect 1:1 mapping to an explicit thing in the law that they are breaking, the company will sue back and win. And if they try to pass such a law, the biggest companies are powerful enough to get rid of them next term, so they don't even try.
I'm not sure if it works on Win11, but this was used to disable it in Win10:
REG ADD HKCU\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Search /v BingSearchEnabled /t REG_DWORD /d 0 /f REG ADD HKCU\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Search /v CortanaConsent /t REG_DWORD /d 0 /f
My other comment was not actually about that though. It was about my computer not actually fighting me over random things, such that I have to circumvent normal means like using the Windows Registry to get what I want done. If you get to the point where you're twiddling with Registry values, you have sunken a lot of time into that problem.
install basic ubanto and then run that bad boy. walk away for 15 min while it does its thing, and then generally good to go. at that point it's just changing the desktop background and ps1 colors
Mac, no. It's almost as bad as windows in terms of having to chase perpetual change for no reason.
Linux though? Absolutely. Nothing changes unless I want it to change. Here's an admittedly extreme, but very real example: I build my parents a simplified Linux desktop setup ca.1996 (neither had any computer experience so wanted to keep it very simple).
Today ~28 years later, my remaining parent is using the exact same setup. The last thing you want to impose on a 95 year old with fading vision is an interface change. So it is exactly what it was in 1996. Through several hardware replacements, countless updates and even distro changes, it is still exactly the same.
This is what user-friendly means. I, the user, own the experience. Neither microsoft nor apple are able to respect that.
Thats impressive and something I wouldn't expect to work. Are they running CDE or is there some other desktop environment that was around back then? What distribution are they using now? Do you have to do much configuration to keep the kernel up to date with an old DE?
Currently on debian, don't remember which distros I used initially. Probably started on slackware.
For email, mutt & emacs. Although both are heavily customized to have simple and minimal commands available, so a regular mutt or emacs user would be a bit lost.
I can't stress enough the power of customizable software! The ones on list list (fvwm, mutt, emacs) are prime examples of excellence on this front.
There is nothing worse than "opinionated" software that doesn't allow extensive customization. Even worse, when they change interfaces every time a new PM joins the company. For older people, any change in interface is a huge setback. There is unappreciated value in software than can be fully customized and then left alone.
The one and only change I made to the setup over the years was to remove the connect/disconnect icons for the (dialup) modem when I upgraded them to DSL and even that small change took a months before they stopped asking about it.
The most problematic part of this stack has been the browser, which I can't keep static and has changed a bunch of times in the last ~28 years. To the extent possible I configure the toolbar to be minimal. But the basic functionality of clicking on home button and back button hasn't really changed in the last three decades and that's basically all they need, so it's been manageable.
Try adding some passes and see.
This is a well-known issue: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/253699496?sortBy=best.
Both before and after I could pull up my other passes easily.
But I don’t know how much credit is due to ongoing config work by central IT versus Microsoft.
Very fitting… both the kindergarten teacher addressing her pupils vs Windows abusing its users have the one thing in common - people who have zero chance of escaping their control and little influence to chamge their situation. In the business world, it’s called a captive market
Fortunately or unfortunately, for most people for most things, the host OS hardly matters anymore. The operating system is now the browser. And this "doesn't feel like mine anymore" is 100x worse there because corporations have fogotten that they're voluntarily presenting data upon the request of an external client and what said client does with the data is none of their business. It's as if visiting a website and downloading the publicly available contents is a nation setting up an embassy of "foreign soil" on your hardware. Editing CSS (or whatever) is equivalent to vandalizing a physical storefront because the pixels on your monitor are theirs not yours despite it being your hardware. Even the very protocol of hypertext transport (HTTP/3) is now designed around being encryption verified JS application delivery for corporate person use cases with no allowances for HTML hypertext transport for human person use cases. So not even linux/mac/bsd/etc is free from the trend.
That said, most if not all the nonsense can easily be disabled or removed so I agree with your overall position.
https://www.androidauthority.com/xiaomi-ads-business-966584/
>This advertisement business is what allows Xiaomi to subsidize and offset the cost of the hardware and reach those astonishingly low price points.
So it wont be surprising if Microsoft says the same
You'll be very sorry in a very short time if you put up with ads in an OS you paid for, on hardware you paid for. You're letting Microsoft externalize some of the cost of advertising to you.
Pardon my French, but someone had to say it and you needed to hear it.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
In the latter case, some (most?) countries require the use of open software and standards in government and various regulated environments unless there's a specific and documented reason why that's practically impossible. You may be able to tell your college they need to support open software rather than requiring everyone to buy proprietary licenses and get familiar with those specific products
(A bit off-topic, but I can recommend using a translator to turn what you've written in English back into a language you're familiar with, to check that it says what your intended. That way, you practice writing and can check the result for good communication also. I've been doing this for German and this is helping me practice in situations where I otherwise would use a translator from my languages into German because the translation's correctness matters.)
https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gtk/-/issues/3787
At least with Windows you don’t have to gaslight yourself into thinking that blurry fonts are better. If you have a setup with multiple high-res monitors (or, God forbid, have to mess with scaling), it takes a lot of work to be happy with the looks and feel of a Linux desktop compared to what you get out of the box with Windows or a Mac.
In terms of modifiability and openness, open source anything is far superior to anything else - which is valuable for a community like this. But there's still plenty to do in terms of providing as seamless of an experience to some average Joe as what macOS/Windows does.
Win11 offline install and de-dork instructions is a must:
https://github.com/StellarSand/privacy-settings/blob/main/Pr...
Even then, one must assume win11 comes with a telemetry payload every second update.
Linux has its own share of issues, but is far easier to develop on (if you check the hardware support before purchase). The only parts of win11 that are any good was the FOSS they packaged in.
Strange times for sure, MS still chasing a set-top box market 30 years after it flopped =)
- "all the people" is probably actually well under 1% of users
- successfully switched all corporate accounts from single-purchase w/ occasional renewal to ongoing monthly subscription
- also a lot of of consumer subscriptions
- Azure
- Github
- LinkedIn
- OpenAI investment
I actually agree with you that the Windows experience is getting worse, quickly. But on balance, seems more is going right than going wrong.
Microsoft can't do that. It's not in their DNA. Every time Microsoft has tried to make something consumer-centric it ended up flopping eventually. Sometimes things lasted a surprisingly long time!
But their consumer-focused stuff like Zune, Xbox, even their keyboards & mice, eventually all kinda lost focus.
Windows mobile was a weird one because they tried to use the same formula they always use - a corporate OS that had all sorts of knobs and buttons for SysAdmins to manage corporate phones. You could join a Windows phone to a domain and manage it.
Xbox was pretty successful for a while because MS just has so much clout with game developers.
Zune flopped HARD. I think the Surface product line has been kinda here and there - a total failure for consumers but some businesses like it... but not many, because most businesses have a relationship with Dell.
I sincerely wish more people were able to enjoy the UX that their clever engineers designed, but I suspect their marketing departments were the downfall of those efforts.
Another way to put it. People aren't buying Microsoft stock because of Windows. They are buying because of Azure and Office365.
I frankly don't know why anyone who isn't tied to very specific software requirements would ever choose Windows anymore.
I had to replace an aging Pixelbook last year and eventually decided the right decision was to get a Mac. It's stable, the hardware is high quality, it does what it needs to do, most non-enterprise software is available, and the custodian of the operating system isn't licensing my data to 3P advertisers. I almost went Linux -- and have built my own Linux machines dating back about twenty years -- but I just wanted a polished, lightweight laptop I didn't have to worry about. I almost bought a new Chromebook, but the software problem is more acute even if the OS is dead simple, and frankly, the hardware -- ever since the Pixelbook -- has been lacking polish (no matter which OEM you buy from).
Really? The only remnants of Windows Server, that I've seen within the last couple of years, were running Exchange and ActiveDirectory.
Even SQL Server installations are moving to Linux.
At the workplace, a large Microsoft shop is buying a complex package of products and services that I can't even identify all of the pieces of. There's Microsoft stuff on my work computer, and on my company supplied iPhone. I must sheepishly confess that it all just works.
For myself at home, my main computer related interest is programming, and a programmer can live a platform-independent life if they want to. This is what I advocate, above and beyond my actual platform preference.
What I suggest to friends if they're thinking of switching (to Linux, Mac, Chrome) is: First, achieve platform-independence by finding the tools that work across OS's. Get up to speed on those tools. Second, switch platforms. That way, you're 99% up to speed before you even switch.
Online tools are already advanced enough for most use case
As for my traditional Windows 10 machine that I game on, in the near future I'll be switching to the best Linux OS for Steam gaming. Two things made me mad enough to change: Win 11 with it's ads and other BS and I'm tired of transfer of data problems relating to both USB-3 and C plug-ins. I've had some experience with Linux, so the transition isn't a problem.
In the simplist terms, it's a similar reason youtube allows users with ad blockers, those people with ad blockers will still share videos to people without ad blockers.
Very short-sighted move from Microsoft. All of this gain now from ad revenue but long-term damage to the brand.
Microsoft and their operating systems are exactly the same. I started using MS operating systems with DOS 2.0. I was hooked. Every new version really was an upgrade. I couldn't wait for each new release because they were all amazing and truly 'upgrades'. I used their stuff because it was good, not because I had to. Slowly however things started to change. Each new 'upgrade' came with things that didn't help and didn't improve. One day I realized they were upgrades, just not upgrades targeted at me. My machine slowly but surely became less and less mine. Eventually I couldn't take it anymore and jumped on the Linux bandwagon. The last two machines I have purchased haven't even made it to the windows startup screen before I wiped them and, just like SF, you would have to pay me a lot of money to move back.
I hope SF and Microsoft learn a lesson from this: If you aren't raising the next generation because they love your product then you are creating a group of people that will leave as soon as they get the chance.
Been on macOS for nearly a decade now. Ironically it still has some things that are objectively worse. Looking at you, lack of alt tabbing.
Pressing alt tab tab should go back two windows of focus, and alt tab tab tab should be three, etc. It was the best feature and now I regularly lose vim windows and terminals because switching windows seems to ruin the tabbing order. It’s never history-based anymore.
I’ll try it out though.
Pop quiz: you click on a chrome window, then a terminal window A, then a different terminal window B. Does pressing alt-tab-tab take you back to the exact same chrome window?
The idea is that it’s a history-based list of active windows. So each time you press tab while holding alt, it goes one further into history. It’s immensely helpful for maintaining context when you’re switching between four different apps during a dev session.
But, I appreciate the recommendation. I’ll test drive it tomorrow.
I don't have my macOS device on hand right now, but I'm almost certain that the AltTab app replicates that behavior. Or, at the very least, it throws out the incredibly annoying obsession that macOS has on separating switching between applications and switching between windows of one application.