Why Windows 10 Sucks | Hacker News Reader

Why Windows 10 Sucks

itvision.altervista.org

Don't forget, Windows 10 abuses TCP link sharing by opening over 100 simultaneous TCP connections to download updates, bringing your entire home network to a grinding halt until it's finished.

Side note to those with a Mikrotik router, you can protect your network from the malware that is Windows Update with the following firewall rules:

    /ip firewall filter add action=drop chain=forward connection-limit=9,12 \
      in-interface=ether1-gateway protocol=tcp src-port=80 tcp-flags=syn,ack
    /ipv6 firewall filter add action=drop chain=forward connection-limit=9,32 \
      in-interface=ether1-gateway protocol=tcp src-port=80 tcp-flags=syn,ack

placed before the rule to accept established connections. These rules are maybe a little overzealous, but they were the only way I've found to make my network usable when Windows Update launches a DoS attack.

Is this for real? Been wondering why my home network's been having intermittent issues. Damn.

Edit: Can't seem to find any confirmation after some searching. Are you sure this is what happens? Finding this hard to believe, even for Windows 10.

Yep. Other people have seen the same thing. Previous discussion on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11851529 The first post in the article describes the exact symptoms I see.

I see the connections only when my wife's computer is on (but not always, maybe once a week), and when they occur, there's a Windows system process churning away on it. Connections are always to Akamai servers (confirmed with whois) on port 80, both v4 and v6 (I have native v6 via Comcast). Didn't occur until she upgraded to Windows 10 a couple months ago (she was on 8 before).

To be fair, this might really be an Akamai thing, with MS just using their client blindly. But neither OS X nor Linux nor Windows 8 does this to my network, so I think it's fair to blame MS for this.

And a Reddit thread on Wednesday's onslaught: https://www.reddit.com/r/networking/comments/4sqf8k/any_one_...

Based on my experience of using 10 for several months, only two of these issues bothered me:

1) The weird multiple control panels make it hard to know how to change some settings.

2) The involuntary upgrade that got me using the OS in the first place.

Overall this is the best experience I've had with any version of Windows. The core windowing functionality is great. It's the first time I haven't felt the need to install another window manager. I think normal users who didn't like the weirdness of the start screen on 8 will be happy with 10.

I totally agree with you Control Panel / Settings are indeed a mess. And a year later they still haven't figured out how to integrate the two. Its funny that when you click on the Wifi icon in the task bar you get the modern looking settings, then you right click on it and choose network settings and you get a completely different experience.

Other than that its a stable OS that does what I want. Also Bash is a very welcome addition.

You got lucky getting by with only 2 issues, I've lost count and since abandoned the OS.

When I upgraded my 8GB RAM, i7 machine (what should be a decent bit of kit) I experienced continual problems.

Sound drivers would just stop working, the OS would completely forget that there were even speakers. The cause would always change and there would always be a different, stressful, time consuming fix. This was not an uncommon problem, I found myself in a large crowd with these faults.

Later I found myself joining plenty others in losing networking abilities after forced updates. My WiFi drivers would vanish and intermittently reappear, pretty much like the sound issue.

Every update MS pushed led to another time-sucking issue to patch up, I would dread the next update.

The continual problems caused by Windows 10 made me go out and buy a Mac. I don't want anything to do with Windows anymore. After suffering through the Windows Phone, Windows 8 and now Windows 10 I'm completely done with MS. It's so sad to see the company just turn itself to trash, I used to be a huge fan.

My favourite two Win10 issues not listed here:

1. There's something in the I/O that's blocking on network access. If your network link is saturated, you can expect to have sound stutter, mouse lag and video lag. It's like watching your computer be put through a slow-motion filter.

2. Microsoft has taken it upon themselves to block certain apps. For example, it specifically blocks Classic Shell.

Addressing your second point - it has done this since at least Windows Vista for compatibility reasons. The features that Classic Shell exposes are ripe for compatibility problems on new versions of Windows and it may well be that the block on Classic Shell won't apply in future versions.

> If your network link is saturated, you can expect to have sound stutter, mouse lag and video lag

Not a Windows 10 issue.

I've had this in various windowses (and it actually went away for me with win10) and found it actually is the network driver blocking things. On older windowses i had to forcefully downgrade the network card's driver to an older version. Try experimenting with that.

Yup, it's inherent to the kernel architecture. Windows is simply incapable of real-time scheduling. Audio engineers who use Windows are forced to disable networking drivers to prevent dropouts.

http://www.thesycon.de/deu/latency_check.shtml

Classic Shell is blocked?? Can you give me any info on that? I've never heard of this.

privacy badger reports 22 possible trackers, 17 of which it blocked. Always funny reading these hypocritical webpages complain about privacy issues.

I also bet the author uses Android or iOS but doesn't seem to be concerned about that.

Or perhaps he runs Cyanogenmod Android with no telemetry back to Mother?

'Bets' based on supposition are dangerous.

I don't have a smartphone currently. I killed the screen of my Nexus 5 half a year ago and after I learned how much it would cost me to recover it (freaking LG), I abandoned the device.

Hm, let's see, I host:

1) google translation widget 2) microsoft translation widget 3) google+ button 4) AddMe widget (some people are not capable of copying the URL) 5) disqus comments 6) Google AdSense

That's all. I don't know where this number (22) is coming from.

Edit: 7) FlagCounter

uBlock blocks these for me (note these are domains, so it's probably blocking more than 1 script from some of these):

addthis.com, adnxs.com, bing.com, crwdcntrl.net, disqus.com, disqusads.com, doubleclick.net, exelator.com, flagcounter.com, google-analytics.com, google.com, googlesyndication.com, statcounter.com

Allowing them triggers blocking another 2.

addthisedge.com, adsnative.com

Something focusing more on privacy would probably also pick up the 2 separate translators on the page that your already mentioned, along with pippio.com whatever that is.

I can imagine Disqus and AddThis are abusing my page, but then I browse the web with temporary cookies so it doesn't bother me. ;-)

Actually if you really value your privacy you should never have permanent cookies (and you should have browser disk cache disabled as well). Oh, and site data (another form of cookies) must be cleaned on browser shutdown as well.

Install the privacy badger to find out. Most web designer arent really aware about all the lookups that go on behind each widget or button.

I'm relatively okay with booting up Windows 10 to play games, apart from the well-known upgrade practices, the inacceptable (if configurable) ad popups for Office 365, and my resulting lack of trust in Microsoft's future practices.

However, pragmatically, on all the Windows 10 machines I've typed on there seems to be a slight, yet easily noticeable delay between keyboard input and, e.g., characters being drawn on the screen, independently of the application. Whatever the reason (compositing? vertical synchronization?), I find this amount of input delay quite off-putting for everyday use and have not found any information on how to reduce it.

There are input latency measurements for Windows 7 [1]. I'm not aware of similar measurements for Windows 10.

[1] https://pavelfatin.com/typing-with-pleasure/#windows

I read thru this list and became sadder and sadder. I was expecting a rant, buy I agree with 90% of his points.

The biggest one for me in simply the UI complaints. Agree almost 100%. It is ugly. Period. And no way of changing that. Something that past Windows Versions let me do. People are so quick to mention XP and its default theme. But that's just it. It was a theme and you were a few clicks away from setting the classic theme which made XP look and feel indistinguishable from the previous version. With all the added benefits that XP brought under the hood.

I'd love to get DX12. I'd love to get the better multiple monitor handling. But if an OS looks ugly as sin to me and there is no way to change that means that I will give that one a miss. Especially if all the other technical shortcoming mentioned here are in it as well. Certainly don't care about the constand reset of all default app settings after each upgrade.

To me Windows is not just a work horse to get things done and I don't care how ugly it is or how horrible it is to use it. There is a certain sense of style involved for me. Just like when I buy cars. Some people simply look for the price and gas mileage. Don't care about the color or what model it is. That's not me, I want a good looking car and I want to have a good experience driving it. Price and mileage matter of course as well but the design is still most important.

I still have 4 more years of life left in Win7 and I will in no way shorten that grace period by sacrificing a usable OS that also looks great for Win10. I also hope that history repeats itself again and MS will have no alternative but to prolong the Win7 support. Just like they did with XP back in the day. If not, I will see in 2020 where we are with vulkan vs dx12 and I will consider a full time switch away from Windows.

Yes I agree. My biggest day-to-day issue is the general UI inconsistency and the ugliness of Cleartype font rendering.

To my eyes, the cleartype tuner doesn't seem to do anything. All the options look the same - in fact I even struggle to notice the difference after turning it off completely. Although I understand this can depend on the type of screen being used.

Most fonts just look sharp, jagged and ugly. I know a lot of people enjoy the more functional/pragmatic approach to font rendering taken by MS but I wish they would make some effort towards rendering fonts consistently and beautifully.

As an IT professional for 20 years I'm unable to rant. I see what troubles me and people around me and report it ;-) I don't make things up.

"svchost.exe (the whole philosophy of preserving RAM this way became outdated years ago)."

What does he mean by that, exactly?

Some services run as threads in a shared process (svchost) to save some ram because windows has many services. You can see them using Process Explorer from sysinternals.

I'm aware of svchost, however I'm not sure I agree with his comment about the technique being "outdated" without more information on what he meant precisely. Did he mean that...

using a monolithic process is outdated?

using a shared process is outdated?

using threads is outdated?

trying to conserve RAM in this fashion is outdated?

svchost in Windows in particular is outdated?

Starting services on a 'need to run' basis is outdated?

...and quite a few other options. It seems to me like all OSs have similar facilities, so I'm not sure what he means that would not apply to other OSs.

This: 1) "trying to conserve RAM in this fashion is outdated?" and 2) "using a monolithic process is outdated?".

However the biggest problem with 2) is that you cannot see what individual thread(s) cause problems and you cannot easily kill/restart the offending DLL.

svchost.exe (i.e "service host"), is a technique for grouping several services into one process. The goal is to avoid spawning one process per service, saving some memory.

I believe today the gains are outweighted by the costs of this technique: memory isn't really the limitation factor anymore. On the other hand, grouping several mostly unrelated services in the same process is a security and stability issue.

You can configure things not to group. It's still annoying and opaque that the name of the misbehaving .exe doesn't instantly tell you which goddamned thing is in it, even if it's just one.

Any pointers how?

Yeah, I'm also curious.

I did this for Windows update on Vista last year. It was really misbehaving, chewing up a lot of memory and CPU time. Eventually I found and applied a patch but during the investigation, I isolated Windows update to its own service executable container.

TL; DR:

   sc config <servicename> type= { own | share }

I got that from this SuperUser stackexchange question:

http://superuser.com/questions/860117/isolate-hosted-service...

A registry-tweaking approach is also given.

Then wrote up my own answer to the WU issue:

http://superuser.com/questions/77658/svchost-eating-up-memor...

Excellent, thanks! I wonder if someone could create a VBS script to make all services "own". And, another problem, I wonder if Windows allows to rename processes, like e.g. Linux can because I don't want to see 50 svchost.exe in the task manager - I want them named after respective DLLs.

I stopped reading when they tried to argue keeping your machine up to date is somehow a negative.

You completely misunderstood the point but I'm glad you left.

> Secondly, Microsoft has stripped us of controlling Windows updates.

> It was ostensibly done to improve the user experience by keeping the system up to date and perhaps malware free, but the truth is that a built-in antimalware protection in Windows is simply horrible (according to various AV comparisons Microsoft Essentials misses over 20% of in the wild malware)

Not much to misunderstand though. You attempt to say it's a bad thing that Microsoft is attempting to keep their software always up to date... because Essentials is bad? Also you should perhaps cite your statistics rather than pull them out of thin air. Essentials got 98.1% detection rate here[1], 94% 'real world protection' here[2] and 84 points here[3]. It's not perfect, but it beats some paid for competitors and is a lot less of a resource hog than something like Norton.

> said updates mean nothing for security because over 90% of infections happen due to the user actions (like downloading and installing dubious applications). No Windows update can prevent such a behaviour.

That's simply not true. Where the hell are you getting 90% from, and how can you possibly go from that number to the conclusion that 'No Windows update can prevent such behaviour' (and so updates are... also bad??).

Updates are good. The user might download a dodgy word document but hey look it was an update got through Windows update that meant she won't get compromised when she opens it. The user might click on a link that is sent via an email, but hey look it's an update to Windows that stops their PC getting rammed by that exploit pack.

Sorry but the whole article stinks of anti-MS FUD and anyone who attempts to argue against keeping (or features that keep) their PC up to date is ignorant at best.

1. http://www.av-comparatives.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/av...

2. http://www.av-comparatives.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/av...

3. http://www.av-comparatives.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/av...

I'm attempting to say that the user is given no freedom to choose when and if to install updates. MS keeps on releasing broken updates which render thousands of PCs broken. If you're OK with that then I'm fine.

Secondly, it's a myth that Windows must be updated to stay secure. It's such a huge myth it's actually cringe worthy. If you're at home windows updates are needed only to keep your IE/Edge installation secure. That's all. All incoming network ports are blocked on your router by default.

And if you're stupid enough to rely on MS Security Essentials then I will stop arguing with you. That's not an AV - that's a huge hole.

Unrequired updates are rarely good.

> Sorry but the whole article stinks of anti-MS FUD and anyone who attempts to argue against keeping (or features that keep) their PC up to date is ignorant at best.

You took just one item on the list to attack without even giving valid sound arguments and now you say the whole article is anti MS FUD.

With that I bid farewell to you. You have yet to become a decent debator.

P.S. The truth is Windows has had some remote vulnerabilities in regard to fonts rendering and such but they are very difficult to exploit (and I haven't heard of any circulating in the wild exploits).

Again in 99% of cases users get infected by downloading shady files from the net or opening unrequested e-mail attachments. Windows updates will NEVER save you from that.

If only St. Steven were still alive. He'd figure out how to profit from this. I can just imagine the new "I'm a Mac", "I'm a PC" ads showing how Windows spies on people and how awful the user experience is.

Instead, Apple just doesn't give a shit anymore. At least not about desktops or laptops.

I'm not sure whether they care or not, but anecdotally, I've been waiting ~2 years for an up to date Retina MacBook Pro with a refreshed, up to date intel CPU.

Must say that the manner in which Windows 10 (installation/upgrade) pop ups appear on older versions of Windows is rather odd.

That said, the manner in which MS chooses to address certain issues [0] is rather weird. (Not sure if this one applies to Windows 10 too, does apply to Windows 8.)

And then you can "Run Bash on Ubuntu on Windows" [1]. I fail to understand how different is it from running Cygwin or MSYS/MinGW if you can't interact with Windows applications.

[0] https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3053711

[1] https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/commandline/wsl/about

I've had the same concerns. Seems like Windows and the Linux layer cannot share files systems. So how does that help a developer wanting to use both the shell and the the IDE?

Sure you can share files, it's works OK with some caveats. More in the overview under DriveFs: https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/wsl/2016/04/22/windows-subs...

[0] could be an XKCD joke. Ho wait... it is: http://xkcd.com/1700/

In the last Windows 10 update, if your username contains nadella, the spying services are disabled and your machine gets 10% faster.

metro is even more integrated in windows 10 than windows 8.1. i really hate it.

Disabling UAC u loose metro apps completely. (i actually enjoy this....dont ask me why)

Im curious what would happend if someone will figure how to spread a virus via windows 10 updates peer to peer :D

all the tracking issues.

start menu is actually a metro interface only smaller....i still wonder how people are so blind and claims that the start menu is back....lol

searching in start menu returns no results with lots of the apps.

updates that restarted my computer without any warning....i had doubts about this...when i read it 1st i thought that maybe those persons pressed ok/yes without noticing. but then it happened to me too....lucky you can disable updates completely...at least in pro version

no improvement in performance....at least for the softwares that i work with...so why bother

the interface looks ugly...

after updates you risk to have problems with drivers for your hardwares.

after installing windows 10 and actually disable all tracking while asked before creating the 1st user, you'll still get them enabled in privacy section in windows (happened twice...no clue how it works these days)

Well it sucks way, way less than Linux and macOS for me.

I'd rather have an OS that gives me what I actually want along with whatever problems it presents instead of just leaving out features like Apple does or breaking all the time like Linux desktop systems tend to.

I was the one who replied to https://twitter.com/NerdPyle/status/730833245122650112

Wow, what an interesting glimpse into the mind of Microsoft. Simultaneously belies a condescending attitude toward users, and a seeming lack of understanding that users have very different expectations for a desktop OS than from a gadget OS (forced upgrades) or the web (telemetry).

Yes, it is called "Windows as a service" for a reason, and I even mentioned it too.

Hardly. Apple clearly has the most condescending attitude towards users. It's built into their brand.

And of course there is no owner for Linux, but have you ever dealt with any of the popular open source project developers that make Linux what it is? (e.g. Gnome? Qt? etc?) Condescending attitudes abound! I've been insulted many, many, many times by the people who run these shit shows just for asking an honest question on IRC/mailing lists/issue boards/forums/etc.

Meanwhile, Microsoft actually listens to users and developers and gives them what they want.

I'll take Microsoft any day over Google, Apple or the crowd of angry Linux devs.

Where did I say anything about Apple or the Linux crowd? Mr. Pyle's comments were condescending at face value alone. Doesn't mean Apple/Linux/etc. aren't also.

You didn't. Those are the choices though.

Anyway, his comments were hardly condescending. Not at all actually.

I disagree. Here's the first tweet:

"The telemetry you hate in Windows 10 allowed us to get rid of a wifi password feature you hate in Windows 10. What to do..."

This statement directly implies that Mr. Pyle believes users' wants to be inconsistent, and proceeds to mock the way he supposes users must now feel now that he's demonstrated their folly.

Here's a non-patronizing way to phrase the same sentiment:

"While I understand that users have privacy concerns about telemetry, I feel it hasn't yet had a chance to demonstrate its benefits. For example, just last week it enabled us to quickly react to negative user feedback about WiFi Sense."

But that's not pithy.

I think the point is that they want to measure how often Wi-Fi Sense is used.

Disagree, fine...but where's the alleged mocking?

It is a fact that that a loud contingent of people hate the Windows 10 telemetry. How is it mocking someone to say so?

If someone said "Those dentist visits you hate actually help you to live longer..." would you say that they're mocking you?

Or, was it the part where he said "What to do..."? I really want to know. Is this a case of you projecting your feelings about Windows telemetry onto the situation? It sounds like you're perception is way off here.

Yes, "What to do" is mocking. It serves no other purpose in the paragraph; the author certainly isn't wondering what to do. It is a phrase often used to mock people who are having a (supposed) crisis of beliefs.

I have zero feelings about Windows telemetry, having not heard of it before this tweet.

Pfffft. That's the big mock that made you type out three posts on HN? LOL. Wow.

> the author certainly isn't wondering what to do.

You don't know that. If people don't like the telemetry but it's really useful, I'd be wondering what the fuck I should do too - wouldn't you???

My one and only released software is in .net I guess I'm stuck with 7 until visual studio stops working.

I was looking forward to 10, decided not to upgrade in case there were issues when it originally came out.

Now? Bloody glad I didn't.

And here I was all ticked off that the Lock Screen option was removed from the Start menu.

>> "If everything you do on your PC is web browsing, watching online videos and listening to online music, give Linux a try."

What??? A Linux install can do much more than a Windows install. Especially considering wine emulator.

I think what they meant was: if you don't play AAA games, or use specific software (Adobe, office, etc.), your safe to migrate.

Even if you play AAA games you can migrate!

https://www.reddit.com/r/pcmasterrace/comments/3lno0t/gpu_pa...

I successfully followed this tutorial using Arch Linux as my primary OS and emulating Windows in QEMU with PCI passthrough to the graphics card. Unfortunately, I had too much lag in my Oculus Rift since I didn't have a dedicated USB PCI card to pass-through, but the performance overhead for AAA games was minimal and I was able to max out Fallout 4 with no noticeable performance decrease.

Thanks! I've definately done the GPU PCI passthrough to play AAA games on linux, before steam for linux came out.

Honestly, I can't think of a time where I my linux machine couldn't do something essential that my windows machine could. But vice versa is another story. Try to run a server on regular windows desktop and it will want to reboot every week for updates. I'm wondering why I got downvotes...maybe simply because I sounded combative or fanboyish...

Exactly. Also, stability in Linux is a never-ending game. Today it works, tomorrow it breaks.

If all you do is use a browser, the real answer isn't Linux, it's a Chromebook.

Which of course is Linux. But still.

Not anymore, new Chromebooks support Google play store apps.

not to mention crouton is easy to install, giving you an Ubuntu or Debian chroot allowing access to tens of thousands of packages.

If you entrust Google with all your data, then yes.

>Especially considering wine emulator

Er, wine is not good. Good luck playing any game with networking or 3d graphics...

Easily disproved lies, go have a look at the wine APPDB if you're not just trolling. Most of the time if something doesn't run right, it's due to DRM or bleeding edge DX features.

Every time I try I find either bronze or silver. Graphical glitches in five year old games aren't "bleeding edge DX" problems.

It really depends on the game. I've had consistent success playing StarCraft and Warcraft III multiplayer with Wine. Morrowind and Oblivion also work well in my experience.

Those are very old games...

YMMV but Wine runs 95% of D3D 9 games just fine.

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