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Comment by swebs | Hacker News Reader

Sorry, but Windows 10 is godawful. I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy. If you want to sell the surface laptop to power users and developers, you're better off mentioning that you can install Ubuntu (as an actual host OS, not WSL bullshit with Microsoft's spyware still running in the background) just fine on certain models.

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I have little insight on spying issues (or how MS compares to what Apple, Google or everyone else is doing regarding that nowadays) but coming from Windows 7 I have zero practical complaints about using Windows 10 over it. I like the WSL bullshit a lot, too.

I disagree with this sentiment. What makes it "god awful" in your eyes? I've been using it at work for the past year or so, and I've had no real issues to speak of.

Do I like more than Ubuntu (which I use personally)? No, but I find it to be pretty easy to use.

Also, the Ubuntu subsystem has been fantastic for working on remote Linux servers. I was using git bash (or Ubuntu in Virtual Box) previously, but I don't need that anymore. It will freeze once in a while, but it's trivial to get going again.

I feel like the trajectory over the last few years has been to make things worse... I guess if you used Windows 8 a lot it's a bit of an improvement but I still don't feel like it's anywhere near as good as Windows 7 was... I'm not even talking about things like deciding it wants to update and spending half an hour doing that when I'm trying to get work done, it randomly installing Candy Crunch and some other crap automatically one update (again, work machine) or the fact that my start menu stops working surprisingly often (seriously, not sure if this is just my machine but it's damn annoying - it just doesn't do anything when I click on it sometimes)...

But just things like the network settings - they have been making getting to Network and Sharing Centre harder each big update, and the replacement (the new metro-style settings app) is just rubbish in comparison. You can't change an IP address in it, can't easily get to the network status, etc... Network and Sharing Centre wasn't even that good but it would be a big improvement to just can the settings app and go back to the Windows 7 control panel...

If you use Windows 10 Pro in an enterprise environment, AD policies can turn off most of the spying (although there have been various issues on that and plenty of other HN threads).

That being said, I don't mind Win 10 when I have to use it. I use it for games and Adobe products and I find it really nice and prefer it to macOS easily.

My main box at home and my laptop at work are both Linux though. Gentoo for life! When it comes to development nothing compares to a good tiling window manager and a solid Linux ecosystem.

I've tried some simple ops stuff on my home computer (Windows), and it's horrible because the alt-tab behaviour is completely ridiculous / arbitrary. Old style was alt-tab goes to previous open window, new one goes ???

What problem do you have with alt-tab? For me it goes exactly to the last window that was open/had focus.

AFAICT alt+Tab is entirely identical to what it was in win7.

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