Every time I search on the start menu there is a web search, impossible to turn off. How is that acceptable?
I install Edge Beta to test something, and the I uninstall it. All of the sudden my search provider in my normal Edge is reset.
And the nagging everywhere. No I don't want 'back-up' my files (OneDrive is not backup, it's sync). And I don't want to be reminded later. I don't want to be reminded ever. All this fuzzy language makes me feel like I'm dealing with a kindergarden teacher addressing his/her pupils.
It's not my computer any more.
Oh, I update a driver. And 2 days later Windows installs an older version. Since when is 6.6.1.40 better than 6.6.1.72? Why would you do that?
Debloat / Software Management: https://github.com/ChrisTitusTech/winutil
Command line software management (Scoop): https://pilabor.com/blog/2021/12/automate-windows-app-setup-...
Comparison (Scoop/Chocolatey/Win-Get): https://daftdev.blog/2024/04/01/chocolatey-vs-scoop-vs-winge...
I would also recommend starship (https://starship.rs/) for your Powershell, which is cross platform and therefore usable for all popular shells. Scoop can also install and manage nerd fonts:
scoop bucket add nerd-fonts
scoop install nerd-fonts/JetBrains-Mono
format="$all\u001b7${fill}$cmd_duration | $time\u001b8"
[fill]
symbol = " "
# right_format = """$cmd_duration$time"""
[username]
show_always = true
format = '[$user[@](red)]($style)'
[hostname]
ssh_only = false
format = "[$ssh_symbol$hostname]($style): "
[time]
disabled = false
format = '[$time]($style)'
[character]
success_symbol = '[>](bold green)'
[git_branch]
format = "[$symbol$branch(:$remote_branch)]($style)"
[cmd_duration]
min_time = 0
format = ' [$duration]($style) '
show_milliseconds = trueThat'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?
https://www.oo-software.com/en/shutup10
and this free tool took care a lot of painful things in windows
Works well to disable various telemetry, bloat and other baddies.
This. Oh my god this.
I'm not sure if it works on Win11, but this was used to disable it in Win10:
REG ADD HKCU\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Search /v BingSearchEnabled /t REG_DWORD /d 0 /f REG ADD HKCU\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Search /v CortanaConsent /t REG_DWORD /d 0 /f
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...
Very fitting… both the kindergarten teacher addressing her pupils vs Windows abusing its users have the one thing in common - people who have zero chance of escaping their control and little influence to chamge their situation. In the business world, it’s called a captive market
well, recently, there was a compromised update to a software package and the recommendation was to roll back to a previous version. there are definite times when removing the latest not-so-greatest for a previous version is the best solution. there's no reason to lose the plot in your ranting. you just lose credibility in your arguments at that point
"The US federal Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency has issued a security advisory recommending that the affected devices should roll back to a previous uncompromised version."[0]
[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XZ_Utils_backdoor#Remediation
YMMV, but this is what I used to disable web search on my Win 11 Pro workstation:
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\Explorer]
"DisableSearchBoxSuggestions"=dword:00000001Bonus points: I’m having fun with my computer again!
Gaming is what kept a lot of people on windows over the years, but thanks to valve and the proton team, Linux gaming works as well as Windows gaming (and some people say better than — I certainly don’t have to deal with all the crap Microsoft tries to put into windows).
Some people refuse to use Linux because they’re afraid of having to tinker with it, but that hasn’t been my experience in over a decade. Things have generally just worked for me.
- I download games from gog via linux and put them on an NTFS partition
- I boot windows 11 in a proxmox VM with passthrough gpu + usb controller for sound
- I mount NTFS partition in VM, install and run games
- my windows 11 install has no network device
- tbh there was a windows defender nag, but I managed to disable it.
I've been wondering if I can do something similar for steam, but haven't touched my steam login in 5+ years. I think you can use a proxy for steam.
That monitor, incidentally, is a 25-inch former iMac. I gutted it after it suffered the widespread burned-out-GPU problem that afflicted many (most?) Macs of circa-2010 vintage, and put an LCD driver board in it.
Everything else works well on Linux. Gaming included. I've run Linux many years, in fact.
But Capture One and Lightroom are not available over there, which is what draws me back to MacOS. Of course I could just use darktable. Have done that for several years. But at the end of the day, I just prefer Capture One, and that's enough reason for me to switch my OS.
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.
At the start of the pandemic I bought a PC to game on. 16-core Ryzen, 64 gigabytes of ram. I'd been kind of pleasantly surprised with WSL and just general improvements in cohesiveness. It's still got that Windows jank under the hood though.
But then... It won't f**ing run Windows 11 because it doesn't have a TPM. And they pester me about buying a new computer. You have to be kidding me.
It's just absolutely incredible Microsoft decided to declare very powerful machines only a few years old essentially eWaste.
I'm probably going to give Desktop Linux another go, at least for a bit. I have no idea what distro though.
I ran Ubuntu on some of my older machines for a number of years. I actually loved Unity, I still think it was the best Linux desktop and I'm bummed they basically killed it.
I tried Pop_OS! a couple years ago on a MacBook Pro but it just up and imploded on me after a couple days Windows ME style. I've got Elementary OS on an old MacBook and I've had a decent time with it. The apps not made specifically for it though. Felt real out of place.
I don't like macOS, but I'd take it over Windows without much hesitation. MacOS is like an authoritarian but tidy country. Windows is more and more like a corrupt third-world country :(
You can keep using Windows 10. The LTSC version will be supported until 2032. Even the regular versions will get (paid) updates probably until 2028.
So far I had one problem with a botched nvidia driver update, but with the magic of Timeshift, reverting that was painless, and I could upgrade properly later.
I haven't missed Windows a single time since making the switch.
At the workplace, a large Microsoft shop is buying a complex package of products and services that I can't even identify all of the pieces of. There's Microsoft stuff on my work computer, and on my company supplied iPhone. I must sheepishly confess that it all just works.
For myself at home, my main computer related interest is programming, and a programmer can live a platform-independent life if they want to. This is what I advocate, above and beyond my actual platform preference.
What I suggest to friends if they're thinking of switching (to Linux, Mac, Chrome) is: First, achieve platform-independence by finding the tools that work across OS's. Get up to speed on those tools. Second, switch platforms. That way, you're 99% up to speed before you even switch.
In the simplist terms, it's a similar reason youtube allows users with ad blockers, those people with ad blockers will still share videos to people without ad blockers.
Very short-sighted move from Microsoft. All of this gain now from ad revenue but long-term damage to the brand.
- "all the people" is probably actually well under 1% of users
- successfully switched all corporate accounts from single-purchase w/ occasional renewal to ongoing monthly subscription
- also a lot of of consumer subscriptions
- Azure
- Github
- OpenAI investment
I actually agree with you that the Windows experience is getting worse, quickly. But on balance, seems more is going right than going wrong.
My Mac, iPhone, and Apple TV are owned by Apple. My Sony TV is owned by Sony and Google. My Windows PC is owned by Microsoft. My Quest 2 is owned by Meta. My Kindle is owned by Amazon.
At best, the Mac and PC I could install Linux on to make them mine. The rest, not so much
Not a perfect device but good enough that I feel like I own it.
Maybe I'm just ranting, but Ubuntu seems to be by far the most common distro for Windows users, and they're definitely not perfect in this respect. I've been running Linux as my main OS for about 20 years and I can't rid myself of snaps. Synaptic will show that the package provided by Mozilla is the latest version and the snap is the installed version. If I reinstall, it goes back to the Mozilla package, only to mysteriously show the snap is the installed version within a few days.
I don't want to bring up the discussion of the Snap Store again, but this experience is pretty much what you get with Windows, just on a much smaller scale. I'd strongly encourage Windows users to install Mint or some other friendly alternative rather than going with the standard recommendation.
The good news is, as you highlight, today there are quiet a few good distros, some that are not that much more of a hassle then Ubuntu for people to get up and going.
You have one default app that does things one way (say, with a "Save" button, and a nice "Settings successfully changed!" message), and another that does things a totally different way (say, with an auto-save and no message that it's been saved).
Linux respects developers, in that it allows the people who make aspects of Linux to do anything any way they way -- but without consistency of UX, is it really respectful of users? Or does it just leave them at the mercy of the devs who often give the impression that they don't care about the user at all and can't be bothered to build anything consistently, or re-factor old code to bring it up to modern consistencies, or put even show a little empathy for users who aren't also advanced software developers.
Not everyone wants to learn how to build a car just to drive a car.
(Disclosure... My exposure to Linux is running various distributions on my Raspberry Pi side projects... Pi Hole, Retro Gaming, silly home automation toys. I tried to set up my elderly parents with Mint Linux and that was a complete disaster.)
As far as my memory and perception of the situation go, there was a time where Ubuntu was #1 on distrowatch and couldn't conceivably be dethroned. Then, they added the spyware in '12 and snaps in '16, neither of which were by any measure without controversy, IMO. (And, spoiler alert -- they have since tumbled down from that position.)
Microsoft is a publicly traded, for-profit company.
Canonical Ltd (Ubuntu) is a privately held, for-profit company.
The Linux Foundation is a 501(c)(6) non-profit organization.
Software in the Public Interest (Debian) is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization.
See the pattern?
By the end, it was like Windows was shoving me into things like OneDrive that I hadn't (at least deliberately) installed, didn't want to use, and didn't understand. This set me up for a risk of breaking things when I'd treat it like the regular Windows filesystem, and eventually I did break Windows and had to reinstall.
I've had none of these problems with Ubuntu. I wouldn't be surprised if alternative Linuxes are even better, but I'm satisfied enough with Ubuntu that trying alternatives isn't a priority.
1) Fusion 360 - Just can't get it working under linux well enough. 2) Monitors - Always issues mixing highdpi and low dpi monitors in linux, my main is a 4k 144hz 43", the sides and tops are all 2560x1440 27s. Oh and there's my Ceiling 4k projector which I turn on to watch movies or baseball when I lean back and think. Which leads to the other issue, Nvidia seems to greatly limit the number of outputs you can have under linux compared to windows. With 6 monitors, I've never gotten it to work even with 6 of the same monitor, let alone my messed up setup.
Yes yes, woa was me. I've had linux as a daily driver for at least 10 years of my main computer use since 1998. I do really prefer it but so far just making the tradeoff.
Also I tend to play games that have anti-cheat like CoD / PubG, etc which further locks things out.
I do like the direction things are going
Fortunately or unfortunately, for most people for most things, the host OS hardly matters anymore. The operating system is now the browser. And this "doesn't feel like mine anymore" is 100x worse there because corporations have fogotten that they're voluntarily presenting data upon the request of an external client and what said client does with the data is none of their business. It's as if visiting a website and downloading the publicly available contents is a nation setting up an embassy of "foreign soil" on your hardware. Editing CSS (or whatever) is equivalent to vandalizing a physical storefront because the pixels on your monitor are theirs not yours despite it being your hardware. Even the very protocol of hypertext transport (HTTP/3) is now designed around being encryption verified JS application delivery for corporate person use cases with no allowances for HTML hypertext transport for human person use cases. So not even linux/mac/bsd/etc is free from the trend.
* Setup started in 100% HiDPI scaling, making everything impossible to read. Every time I ran setup, I had to set it to 200% using display settings before I do anything else.
* Installation software crashed twice mid-installation. I was only able to complete installation on my third attempt.
After the installation, I noticed that Ubuntu doesn’t have the features below out of the box: https://x.com/esesci/status/1803374884858347856?s=46 You either had to go through painful and complicated configuration steps, or install third-party software:
* Hybrid sleep (is a must for laptops).
* Face login.
* Live full disk encryption on demand. I’m actually baffled by this as Bitlocker on Windows makes this trivial. I actually expected FDE to be enabled from the installation by default but I wasn’t even asked.
* Fast fractional scaling on HiDPI displays. 200% is just too big and 100% is too small, and 150% hogs the CPU (or GPU?). As I understand, fast fractional scaling is impossible with Linux because fractional scaling is a bitmap operation while it’s just a rendering parameter on Windows.
* No factory reset. If you ran a script that messed up your system, your only option is to reinstall the OS. The problem with that is, if you had to install it using a very slow USB stick in the first place, a reset operation also becomes a multi-hour operation while Windows could just use its local recovery image to reinstall itself in a much shorter time.
All in all, Ubuntu felt like a huge step back from Windows. I haven’t tried other distros, but I don’t think the difference would be significant for the issues I mentioned.
Yes, I also dislike the features in Windows that inconvenience people, but man, does Linux have a long way to go.
Fingerprint login, graphics scaling, sleep, and everything works out of the box on the Thinkpad I bought for my non-technical GF to run Ubuntu on. (She installed it herself!)
Windows, like every modern operating system 2006 or newer, has a graphics compositor to do basic things like allow GPU-accelerated window stretching, prevent screen tearing, and so on (OS X had one slightly earlier). Meanwhile while Linux has had multiple modern attempts to build a composited graphics stack (Compiz, Wayland) certain very vocal elements of the Linux community complain about any attempt to build a graphical stack you can't send via carrier pigeon and have dragged their feet or otherwise thwarted wide(r) adoption.
See https://github.com/linux-surface/linux-surface/wiki/Supporte...
If you are using a recent version of Ubuntu, FDE and HiDPi should not be an issue except for old apps. Factory Reset doesn't exist on most desktop distros but things are moving towards other (and better IMHO) approaches. e.g. Deterministic NixOS or Fedora Atomic Desktops. Hybrid Sleep and Face login is not available OOTB but can be configured. I agree with your remaining points.
You are correct that it's impossible to do after the fact whilst the system is live. LUKS is also not very resilient. Bitlocker stores several copy of its headers in case of sector damage. With luks2 you're SOL.
- cortana
- ads… ADS… in the OS
- forced updates
- windows live accounts (or is it microsoft.com? wait, no, I think it’s office.com?)
- two system settings screens
- major new versions after “last version of Windows ever: 10”
I dread the time when they remove the old one. Small settings that I like to tinker with are hidden here and I doubt program managers will care about them at all.
Example: customizing the mouse theme. Seems frivolous, but without changing the text cursor, increasing the cursor size too much makes it very difficult to pinpoint text since the effect point is on the center of a big cursor rather than on a clearly defined edge.
I asked me one time about safari. Over the life of each computer.
When I was logging into my work the other day, using MS Teams it suddenly dawned on me that my younger self is very disappointed. There I was in the process of logging into work VPN, the teams app is actually scanning my face couple of times... and god knows what else.
Part of me wonders if all this advertisement and service hawking is related to a fear of massive market size reduction, overall.
The one thing Windows gets right IMO is binary backward compatibilty, in particular with games, but also with older apps still from the pre-subscription era (3D modelling, Adobe sw, ...). Unfortunately, x86 seems kindof going under. Haven't tested extensively, but I wouldn't be surprised if a regular (non-pro) iPad can run old DOS games on RetroArch/dosbox longer on a charge than any outdated x86 hardware can. Right now, MS also again attempts to bring Windows onto ARM after their former attempt failed miserably with no exclusive software available that people actually wanted to use (cf Dells new ARM-based XPS and others). Is there instruction-level emulation with JIT on Windows ARM for x86/64 like Apple's Rosetta/Rosetta2?
It's the same tactics with Windows: introduce shockingly bad new version, but continue support of old version (seems neutral because "I'm never upgrading"). Force new users to new version. Release new "good" version with all the compromises of previous version (seems positive).
I looked on Microsoft's site but all it says is to contact their sales team. Did you have luck with that process? Usually when a company says 'contact sales' that means it is very expensive.
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 been pretty good so far, and makes Win 11 seem like a usable desktop rather than the piece of shit that MS wants to inflict on people.
Linus Tech Tips reviewed it a while back, and gave it the thumbs up:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dc7CIkZcWYE
Bizarrely, the earliest versions of AtlasOS used to disable security updates. No idea what was going through their heads when they did that.
Thankfully that stupidity has passed (after lots of people complained), so (security) updates work as expected these days.
Win11 offline install and de-dork instructions is a must:
https://github.com/StellarSand/privacy-settings/blob/main/Pr...
Even then, one must assume win11 comes with a telemetry payload every second update.
Linux has its own share of issues, but is far easier to develop on (if you check the hardware support before purchase). The only parts of win11 that are any good was the FOSS they packaged in.
Strange times for sure, MS still chasing a set-top box market 30 years after it flopped =)
It’s one of many I was able to find!
My favourite version of windows was Windows 2000. It was a true get shit done and stay out of the way experience. I believe the enterprise server versions retained some of that appeal (might still).
Forcing ads into something is a sure fire way to get me to stop using a product.
"We're getting things ready", reboot, create a Microsoft account, 10 data sharing settings to turn off, "almost ready..."
Iirc, a MacBook is ready to use without any updates.
Pretty sure some vendors update phones in the store to avoid bothering the customer with it. Seems like a lot of effort to boot the full inventory's amount of phones every time there's a security patch only so people don't have to download a diff on first launch (edit: found it https://www.macrumors.com/2024/03/27/what-new-machine-to-upd...)
The Macbook's setup is definitely a bit faster than Windows, but it's not way faster. I still had to turn off a lot of the things it suggests, and I still was prompted to update the OS. However, the Macbook was less pushy and I felt the features at least seemed to offer some user value.
You're immediately hit with apps you can't uninstall (Edge) too.
Fwiw, CS2 ran away smoother for me on Kubuntu than it does on Win11 (same hardware). I wasn't expecting that.
The only time it’s mandatory is if you are restoring from a back up or transferring from another computer with a newer operating system.
So if your old machine was on 10.20.1 but your new machine is 10.19.4 because that was the newest when it was put in box then you’ll have to update it first.
Do you want to give this app access to downloads? To desktop? To microphone? What about this app? Sign in to iCloud. Sign in again. Maybe this time? Nope, sign in to iCloud.
I’ve picked my poison, and it’s Apple, but it’s far from perfect.
Try searching for a file by name. Third-parties have had this figured out for years and yet Microsoft can’t deliver accurate or quick results.
Two different interfaces for settings since the failed Metro experiment. The jarring introduction of old NT menus where they haven’t updated a setting to the new UI.
I could go on, but the author has done a good job of cataloguing a broken product.
I don’t mind them trying. But don’t keep asking, or ask again on every update, or badge settings because I haven’t my added to my wallet, or keep telling me how much better a family plan is when I’m single. It’s not better, it’s a waste of money.
I can’t imagine switching off macOS/iOS. I don’t want Linux or Windows. But I’m getting less happy every year.
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 ;-)
Within minutes of turning it on I get broken features, disjointed UIs, poor performance, outdated software, and exploitative functionality. Not just from third parties, who are a big problem, but Microsoft itself! They've had decades to address these issues but instead just chase marketable ideas. If they course corrected even a little every year they'd have something viable but it doesn't seem like that's part of their corporate culture.
But I guess I'm wrong because they're a multi-trillion dollar company and still dominate the PC market.
I think I might be able to completely get rid of Windows now.
Has this happened to anyone else? I've never experienced an official Windows update rendering a system unbootable. I've certainly broken Windows before, especially when messing with the MBR, dual booting, changing system files for customization etc., but never with a random Tuesday patch.
They're all basically maintenance free, nothing really breaks and they just chug along.
https://blogs.microsoft.com/eupolicy/2024/03/07/microsoft-dm...
Manjaro Cinnamon LTE: I know there’s some controversy with Manjaro, but it’s been working fine for me and it drastically increased my laptop’s battery life.
AtlasOS, a trimmed down version of Windows 11 for gaming: I know it’s a bit controversial as well, but I’ll never install or store anything sensitive in it. Only games.
If you treat Apple hardware like a subscription model where you make sure not to hang on to anything for too long (these engineering problems that happen after a couple years seems awfully convenient) then you get the arguably better OS / general computing experience without the risk of expensive hardware going wrong over time. And it's an expensive subscription model today, the days of a top spec Apple laptop for £1500 are gone, so a decent general computing experience is now at a premium.
Owning a MBP beyond a few years these days puts you in the ticking time bomb territory, at some point whether it's the soldered SSD endurance or an exploding SSD/T2 chip, it cannot be affordably repaired when it bricks.
In the meantime, hackintoshes have a little bit of life left, and Linux looks to me finally like its only another 5-10 years before the year of the desktop is here, and I say that positively having used it on and off for 25 years
Three days later the computer rebooted and had undone all my fixes and now search was back to using the web!
Definitely never felt like MY system. It feels like a creepy corporation changing my settings. Which is exactly what it does.
Another three days later, Recall was announced.
Three days later, I wiped Windows from all my computers.
All going well for me, I love Pop!_OS
I have not looked much at the OS-modding scene recently, but there used to be huge communities around deep customisation, and they produced "distros" of Windows with very different defaults and much of the annoyances removed, and popular useful thirdparty software installed. It's not 100% legal of course, and that "choice to have Microsoft butt out" is usually an absolute --- no updates at all except ones you manually install, some things might not work (possibly a feature for some), and you are truly on your own (with the community) with those mods.
And this, in a "paid" OS. One, on top of everything, where - other than money - you are paying with compute and ever increasing disk space for "updates" to cover the vendor's incompetence incorporating bug fixes on the fly ...
In no other area of human industry is this model tolerared: Would you buy a car only to gradually receive better (correct) tires aftermarket?)
Isn't that what Tesla did with "Full Self-Driving"? And people are buying Teslas like crazy
My computer is how I interface with the critical functions of my life; family, friends, income, entertainment. That is important time to me.
If you put any friction in front of me accessing those things, you are getting the boot. Interruptive advertising? Popups and popovers? A forced login where none is necessary? Delete.
I don't give a baker's fuck how valuable you think your service is, you get about 5-10 seconds of my time before you're wasting it. This is why people want book summaries and reviews, why they scan headlines, why they'll install ad blockers.
I thought that some things like games would stop working, but instead I had to install absolutely no drivers, fix nothing, video playback on my laptop has gotten better (before I often switched to 720p on YouTube) and even high performance requirement games on my desktop just work thanks to proton. It’s actually the year of the linux desktop for me now.
It's especially bizzare that it's a 4 year old laptop with dying battery and Windows 10.
Was it a Window thing or a hardware manufacturer thing? Either way it was very strange
Microsoft and their operating systems are exactly the same. I started using MS operating systems with DOS 2.0. I was hooked. Every new version really was an upgrade. I couldn't wait for each new release because they were all amazing and truly 'upgrades'. I used their stuff because it was good, not because I had to. Slowly however things started to change. Each new 'upgrade' came with things that didn't help and didn't improve. One day I realized they were upgrades, just not upgrades targeted at me. My machine slowly but surely became less and less mine. Eventually I couldn't take it anymore and jumped on the Linux bandwagon. The last two machines I have purchased haven't even made it to the windows startup screen before I wiped them and, just like SF, you would have to pay me a lot of money to move back.
I hope SF and Microsoft learn a lesson from this: If you aren't raising the next generation because they love your product then you are creating a group of people that will leave as soon as they get the chance.
Been on macOS for nearly a decade now. Ironically it still has some things that are objectively worse. Looking at you, lack of alt tabbing.
It does sound weird to be hoenst, as this has not been my experience at all. My Macs have never felt like my own, and the obtrusiveness has been of a different form.
But reading through, my experience with Win10/11 has been slightly different as well. I haven't come back the next morning to find it 'broken', so I do wonder if it's about use cases and regional settings too - after all, isn't there a reduced jank in the European zones?
For most of the usual things I do, I forget Apple the company exists and just use the computer as a neutral tool. Windows 10 and especially 11 on the other hand makes Microsoft's "presence" known at every turn, kind of like I'm working in a team composed of 70% Microsoft sales reps.
But the moment I want to exercise control over a Mac, like install some software, I hit the Apple "bouncer", telling me that I need to identify myself and do everything through them.
Destroyed that abomination with a nice debian install.
> At this point, I have lost count of the number of times that I've left my perfectly working Windows computer at the end of my work day, only to return to a completely broken computer that won't boot the next morning.
What? I have had this happen maybe three times in my 30 years of using Windows products (from automatic updates). Do people really forget what a pain it was to patch things from scratch in 98, Win2k, or Windows ME? (Probably before then as well, but I didn't have the Internet). I remember using CDs for service packs, specialized software to download updates that MS didn't serve anymore, so many things. When that process failed, it was a all night event for one system.
I do remember rampant malware on Windows (unless you kind of knew what you were doing) until about 2007 when windows defender actually started helping and you didn't need to nuke your computer with Malware Bytes or something every time you used a web browser.
This belly aching and nostalgia is everywhere on the web, and I really think there is a trend toward selecting only the good memories.
We get old. It gets harder to deal with change. IMO, drop the ego, and say what you really mean.
However, I agree with the privacy and advertising gripes.
Swinsian on Mac OS is pretty good when im using a Mac.
In the latter case, some (most?) countries require the use of open software and standards in government and various regulated environments unless there's a specific and documented reason why that's practically impossible. You may be able to tell your college they need to support open software rather than requiring everyone to buy proprietary licenses and get familiar with those specific products
(A bit off-topic, but I can recommend using a translator to turn what you've written in English back into a language you're familiar with, to check that it says what your intended. That way, you practice writing and can check the result for good communication also. I've been doing this for German and this is helping me practice in situations where I otherwise would use a translator from my languages into German because the translation's correctness matters.)
Thankfully Linux Desktop is now a completely viable thing for many many professions.
Put all that aside, satisfactory of Windows peeked at Windows 7. Never seriously used Windows 8. Windows 10 was trouble, but still much better than Windows 11. When Windows 10 started rolling out, I heard there was lots of issues, so I ignored the upgrade notice. Soon I noticed the fan on computer was running crazily in midnight, but when I checked in the day time, it looked alright. It went on for around half a year or so, I was woken up and was so annoyed decided to check what was happening. It was M$ trying to upgrade to Windows 10. Alright, let me upgrade then. The manual upgrade failed and the rollback also failed. Had to clean wipe and install Windows 10 to avoid such nonsense. Then I started to notice after almost every update, there would most likely something got fixed or broken randomly. Also the Active Hours setting just annoyed me, but still not quite enough to force me to go to Linux.
Windows 11 is even worse. Got a Surface pro for the kid, took a couple of hours to get it working. Then an upgrade broke the display driver. Uninstall of the offending patch failed, could not rollback neither. So first clean wipe for Windows 10. On my gaming PC, all my settings to disable those defender etc would be lost after an update, the UI is sometimes very lagging, don't want to touch it yet as too much effort required. Then I got a new PC with Ryzen 7840u and 64G RAM, after booting up, the CPU would constantly be around 20% for no obvious reason. Since I didn't really have anything installed, so I directly wiped it and installed Linux. It was so good. Video/Audio drivers installed correctly automatically. CPU usage when idle now drops to ~2%. The only thing I miss about is Visual Studio, but that's about it.
unpopular opinion - almost all annoyances are most affecting those who can then find a solution and apply it (provided they don't get a restricted account from work).
on the other hand, have to agree that when even those publishing such circumventions had enough, m$ got to tread a bit lightly.
Windows 11 installs all sorts of stupid stuff and turns it on.
I feel like I only know how to use Windows 10 and 11 because I know about all the old dialogs from old versions.
I struggled today on a Windows 10 computer with Wi-Fi and ethernet to turn on/off Wi-Fi due to mixed meaning of tile highlight state. Maybe it's just me.
And when Windows 11 installs updates and says "You're almost there" I say, "no, you're almost there and why are you doing this now."
I'm optimistic that eventually leadership will change and this will be corrected. Edit: or somehow a new OS will be developed that's backwards compatible with Windows.
None of the fucking app store icons work?
Terminal, one of the better additions of 10, shows up in the start menu with the image preview app icon...
I have tried all the stupid solutions around the icon cache to no avail.
Otherwise, yeah, Windows nowadays, especially the Windows 11 feels like a cheap bazaar.
I thought of that recently, when I noticed that Github started displaying links promoting Copilot.