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Comment by NiveaGeForce | Hacker News Reader

> Its truly amazing to me that installing windows software is still like this

It doesn't have to be that way, since there is a Windows/Microsoft Store since plenty of years now.

But then you have gamers and game devs spreading FUD about UWP and the the MS Store, while they praise 3rd party platforms like Steam and GoG that actively refuse UWP apps in their store, while allowing Spyware like this.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Steam/comments/8pud8b/psa_red_shell...

Yet, nobody dares to hold those platforms responsible.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/8sg294/16_studios_re...

> The long term solution is to get off the platform.

No, the long term solution is to embrace the MS Store, or at the very least modern platforms like WinRT/UWP that would prevent most types of malware attacks.

Why do we still accept the violation of the principle of least privilege in this day and age?

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This account has been using HN exclusively to promote a pro-Microsoft agenda for a long time. That's a serious abuse of this site and I've banned it.

All: Agenda-driven and single-purpose accounts aren't allowed on Hacker News because they're incompatible with the intellectual curiosity this site exists for. Double that when the agenda or single purpose is advancing corporate interests. It doesn't matter what corp it is, btw; the last time we banned an account for doing this it was a different one.

This is a serious false accusation. Am I not allowed to prefer Windows? All I did was correct the rampant misinformation and bias against Windows that rarely gets challenged.

And do you really think someone working for Microsoft would post something like this? https://www.reddit.com/r/Surface/comments/7of68m/surface_pro...

I didn't say you work for Microsoft. I have no way of knowing that, and it doesn't seem likely. But you can't use HN exclusively to promote one company over others. The reasons ought to be obvious.

Here is more proof that I'm not promoting for MS https://www.google.com/search?q=niveageforge+pen+issue+site:...

I'm the most vocal about this pen issue, that could potentially cost MS billions of dollars if they need to recall those devices. I once posted a pen issue thread that got banned from /r/Microsoft once. https://www.reddit.com/r/microsoft/comments/82ilso/the_worka...

I don't disbelieve you but from our point of view it is beside the point. The point is that you've used HN primarily to argue for one company, and that's a serious abuse of this site. And we don't allow agenda-driven accounts or single-purpose accounts in general.

Also, double standards, since plenty of people post only about Linux, Android, ChromeOS, OSX or iOS and they never get flagged. And yes, genuine non-paid Windows enthusiasts like me do exist, and I shouldn't feel ashamed of it.

There is a perpetual hostility towards Windows users on this site, maybe you should address that first.

Microsoft itself is collecting a lot of telemetry even in Basic configuration [1], for example, if you use UAC (privileges elevation popup) they collect "the full command line arguments being used to elevate.". Also they collect a lot of hardware identifiers (including IMEI - unique phone identifier that allows to track it) so later they can reliably prove that some user was using this computer at this time. What a nice feature.

They also collect information on files that are " part of an app and either have a block in the compatibility database or are part of an anti-virus program.".

How can we trust Microsoft after this?

[1] https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/privacy/basic-level...

Do you rather trust arbitrary 3rd party Win32 apps, that have free reign to crawl your whole user profile and mess with the integrity of your system?

If you're already on Windows 10, at the very least embrace UWP to get some control over your privacy.

> If you're already on Windows 10, at the very least embrace UWP to get some control over your privacy.

This is reasonable. And, at this point it's important to note that the first comment in the chain advocated for moving off the platform.

The long term solution CAN'T be the MS store. It requires asking Microsoft for permission to compete with them. It gives MS permission to bar entire categories of software globally or in your particular market.

Giving the party running the store 30% of all revenue is a hard sale to start with.

More importantly it gives MS the position to impose whatever dictates it or even more likely every government in existence the right to impose whatever restrictions they like on any app maker in existence with the threat of instant non existence.

Want a social media platform to ban anyone who disagrees with the king no problem do it or you can't do business. Want your browser to censor whatever your locality wants? No problem if it doesn't it doesn't get distributed. Want your OS to refuse to install apps that don't follow the store rules? No problem its in the governments interests and the companies.

Linux package management works like an app store with an official source and the ability to add whichever sources you choose. A search of available packages shows results giving sources the priority set by the user. Updating the system updates packages from 3rd party sources same as others. The major limitation is the labour required to create packages for all the different platforms users prefer not artificial limits or money paid to the platform "owner".

On windows nothing much is on the store mostly because people don't want to give Microsoft 30% on Linux charging 30% is downright impossible because people would trivially publish an alternative source instead.

Basically your cure is worse than the disease and since Microsoft wont fix the situation in a reasonable fashion so the only solution is to move off their platform.

> Giving the party running the store 30% of all revenue is a hard sale to start with.

Very soon it won't be 30% anymore.

https://blogs.windows.com/buildingapps/2018/05/07/a-new-micr...

> Linux package management works like an app store with an official source and the ability to add whichever sources you choose. A search of available packages shows results giving sources the priority set by the user. Updating the system updates packages from 3rd party sources same as others.

There exist 3rd party package repositories on Windows too.

> On windows nothing much is on the store mostly because people don't want to give Microsoft 30%

There is plenty of stuff in the MS Store. https://youtu.be/GCVhmKVRkk0

All my software, except for some dev tools and some games are from the MS Store.

> on Linux charging 30% is downright impossible because people would trivially publish an alternative source instead.

Steam is on Linux and charges 30%.

> Basically your cure is worse than the disease and since Microsoft wont fix the situation in a reasonable fashion so the only solution is to move off their platform.

Microsoft already provided a fix, called UWP.

"There exist 3rd party package repositories on Windows too."

The MS store does NOT have user configurable repos for consumer versions of windows.

You don't need the MS Store for 3rd party repositories.

You: "No, the long term solution is to embrace the MS Store"

Me: No solution which gives a single party absolute control over what software a user is allowed to run is a long term solution.

What is your ideal solution? Which platform should we move to? On Linux I can download Filezilla and it run it untrusted too. So obviously there is no Linux distro that satisfies your requirements because this exact same issue can happen there. Same on Mac. Heck, even Windows is willing to warn you. iOS and the like give Apple similar permissions that you are against, so "the long term solution CAN'T be" the Apple app store.

> It requires asking Microsoft for permission to compete with them

On that note, Apple now distributes iTunes for Windows through the Microsoft Store.

I wonder if MS would have been on board with that around the time they were launching the Zune.

I agree with you about the control aspect, but.

> On windows nothing much is on the store mostly because people don't want to give Microsoft 30% on Linux charging 30% is downright impossible because people would trivially publish an alternative source instead.

Most package managers on Linux do not provide any sort of revenue stream. The comparison only holds when the software is free, at which point '30%' is $0.

The main exception I'm aware of, the elementaryOS app center, provides a worse deal. Same 70/30 split for $2 charges, but it's 50/50 on a $1 charge.

There is also e.g. Chocolatey[0], which IIRC is the closest thing to a GNU/Linux package manager for Windows.

I install and update from Chocolatey whenever possible.

[0] https://chocolatey.org/

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