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Comment by xeeeeeeeeeeenu | Hacker News Reader

I don't understand why so many people on HN praise Satya Nadella. I guess good PR is worth much more than actions.

Before Nadella, Windows wasn't nearly as user-hostile as it is now. There was no mandatory telemetry, there were no forced updates, end users weren't treated as betatesters and QA wasn't non-existent. And now they are taking away the ability to use Windows without Microsoft Account.

Of course there are also many other problems with Windows 10, like the UWP fiasco, but they're minor in comparison to what Microsoft is doing with user's freedom and privacy.

I always preferred Windows to Unixes, but at this point I think it's time to give up and switch to some Linux distribution. It's clear that the situation will only get worse.

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They watch what companies like Google get away with to see how far they can push things.

> Activity history helps keep track of the things you do on your device, such as the apps and services you use, the files you open, and the websites you browse. Your activity history is stored locally on your device when using different apps and features such as Microsoft Edge, some Microsoft Store apps, and Office apps.

> If you've signed in to your device with a Microsoft account and given your permission, Windows sends your activity history to Microsoft. Once your activity history is in the cloud, Microsoft uses that data to enable cross-device experiences, to provide you with the ability to continue those activities on other devices, to provide personalized experiences (such as ordering your activities based on duration of use) and relevant suggestions (such as anticipating what your needs might be based on your activity history), and to help improve Microsoft products.

https://privacy.microsoft.com/en-us/privacystatement

> In some cases, your ability to access or control your personal data will be limited, as required or permitted by applicable law. How you can access or control your personal data will also depend on which products you use.

> Not all personal data processed by Microsoft can be accessed or controlled via the tools above. If you want to access or control personal data processed by Microsoft that is not available via the tools above or directly through the Microsoft products you use, you can always contact Microsoft at the address in the How to contact us section or by using our web form.

Same source.

It isn't a trustworthy company. I uninstalled VS Code and am going to start recommending Spacemacs, Sublime Text, Doom Emacs, Vim, or anything else. That page is also VS Code's privacy statement.

Linked here:

https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/supporting/FAQ

https://github.com/VSCodium/vscodium/ is being actively kept up-to-date with VSCode's rolling releases and takes care to remove "the corporate/privacy nasties" while still retaining the (rather useful) extensions marketplace. Not a fork or port, just a "filtered build" (or build script if you want to diy). Worked without hiccups for me for over a year now (Linux). Updates come in a few days to a week after the original.

How is anything you quoted a problem? Activity history being synced to your Microsoft account is an entirely opt-in feature. It's designed to assist in the scenario of "I moved from my desktop to my laptop and want to open that file I was working on a few days ago....now what did I name it and where did I put it?"

That feature could easily be opt-in, without any dark patterns. If people want it, they could check a box.

Data shouldn't leave my devices unless I opt-in on a very specific case-by-case basis.

Giving personal data (like browsing history, identifying information, etc.) should not be a requirement for using technology, which has become a fundamental aspect of participating in society.

there were no forced updates

I have attempted to disable those "for real", and the lengths that MS has gone to in an attempt to stop people from doing it is extremely disturbing; there's half a dozen different services and scheduled tasks with various names which are involved, and if you don't disable all of it quickly, it all comes back. This Hydra-like persistence is something that hitherto was only seen in malware.

I too preferred the Windows GUI, and have been a Windows user since the 3.x days, but the gradual destruction of options (especially in appearance preferences) and increasing user-hostility has pushed me towards experimenting with Linuxes and BSDs more. I've always liked the Unix CLI and filesystem layout, however --- sh/bash is so much more powerful and consistent than COMMAND.COM/cmd.exe (and PowersHell feels more like an overengineered obese clone of the Unix shells), and the "everything is a file" metaphor and single-rooted filesystem is very elegant. I guess my ideal OS would be a combination of a Linux/BSD kernel with a Windows GUI.

Is this on Home or Pro? On Pro, I have them disabled via Group Policy, and I _never_ get an unexpected update, just occasional notification saying "Required updates are ready to install".

The most recent occurrence of this hydra is usocoreworker which most likely replaced previous Windows Update services components; sometimes it's even impossible to kill it even by temporarily elevating rights of task manager or console (for taskkill use) by 3rd-party tools. It can spawn in the background even if you postponed updates - guess that's the MS insurance that OS will receive updates despite of user settings choice and update feature will be immune to bypassing (but luckily, that is possible - at least for this moment, if you of course try hard enough).

Gods, I miss the good times of XP, Vista and 7 where it was possible to control updates and avoid potentially dangerous patches.

You can get very close to the Windows GUI with pretty much any of the popular desktop environments: KDE, XFCE, Cinnamon, MATE, and even GNOME

KDE, XFCE, Cinnamon, and MATE will get you close right off the bat.

Not consistently so, e.g. QT vs GTK thing

I have Enterprise on one machine, Pro on another. I don't recall ever having a reboot forced, but sometimes they make it really annoying, popping up a "please restart now to apply updates!" message multiple times a day - I'd really like a "remind me in x days" option for these notifications.

In more recent versions this exists, though I'm not sure how long it'll let you push it off.

Keep experimenting! I hope you find a GUI that suits you, which you can pair with a free software OS. :-)

I use Windows on a day to day basis, and you might sometimes find me defending that.

However, I hate stuff like this. You are right, it is user hostile.

Windows 10 under the hood is solid, but this kind of thing really pisses me off. It’s the same issue with ads or bing in the start menu, you literally can’t turn it off anymore (you used to be able to with the Registry Editor or GP).

I use MacOS as well regularly, and you just don’t get this kind of crap from Apple (just different kinds of crap).

Yep. I am an unapologetic Unix diehard, but the core NT system is nice. Flexible, portable, supports multiple personalities (even if they barely use it like that; WSL1 being an example of leveraging it), parts are borderline microkernel-ish, by all accounts very nicely designed. Then... There are the user-facing parts of the system. The GUI, the licensing, the telemetry/spyware, ads, forced updates, WHY IS XBOX ON THE SERVER BUILDS, just... All of it. So, I live on Linux and the odd BSD... well, really just "Not Microsoft". Because a beautiful kernel under that userspace is still a loss.

I feel the same way - Windows 10 is my daily driver, and mostly I love it!

But I use Pro and Enterprise editions - I would find it really irritating if my Start menu was spammed with ads and apps I didn't install.

And disabling local accounts (or at least making it even harder to use them) is a scummy move.

The very first comment on that Reddit thread shows that this is a UI change. The functionality is not removed but only hidden if you have an active connection.

What Microsoft is doing with this dark pattern is bad for everyone, but we must accurately represent the situation.

Agreed, but it is something of a technicality - for typical users, the result is the same as if the option was removed entirely.

If you love features, KDE Plasma is fantastic, the environment with Kubuntu or KDE Neon. I think it has more features than Windows. And then there is like antiX or MX Linux where it runs so quick and smooth, using minimal resources, like Windows 2000 with its services disabled. Linux is great and everyone can find the distro that suits them well.. even if it might take a few tries to find it, ha.

Seconded.

I've been using Plasma since the KDE 3.4 days, although I've dabbled in other desktop environments. I love it. I honestly miss the experience when I'm using other operating systems on machines other than my own personal ones.

And other Linux desktop environments are also honestly pretty good. Plasma's just my favorite, not the only good one.

I hope some people do try Linux on account of stuff like this and find a happy home in it. It feels really good not to be insulted, deceived, or bossed around by your OS.

If I was going to set up an older person who struggles with computers, would you say plasma is decent, or should I stick with cinnamon?

I'd go for lubuntu in that situation.

i would say stick to mint cinnamon

Most people on HN, I would postulate, don't use Windows. We might use VS Code, we might use Azure, but we aren't using Microsoft's operating system.

You'd be surprised about this. A ton of developers use Windows even if they are developing software that runs on Linux servers (myself included). Especially so in the last few years with WSL being quite good and Docker being available.

2019's Stackoverflow report for OS usage put Windows at 49.3% for "Professional developers" with MacOS at 29.2% and Linux at 25.3%.

I happen to have a few tech courses on programming and Docker and none of it requires writing Windows specific apps. Just general web apps. Over 50% of the people who take my courses are on Windows. Windows usage for Linux based development is real.

> 2019's Stackoverflow report for OS usage put Windows at 49.3% for "Professional developers" with MacOS at 29.2% and Linux at 25.3%.

Now expand that over the years and you'll get a clear downward trajectory:

    2013: 60.4%
    2014: 57.9%
    2015: 54.5%
    2016: 52.1%
    2018: 49.9%
    2019: 47.5%

That's 12.9% less market share compared to just six years ago.

Note that they haven't asked about the OS in 2017 and that the numbers I've found here[0] for 2019 are a few % smaller than yours. I've also used "all respondents" instead of the professional ones because they didn't make the distinction until 2018, but quite frankly, that works in Microsoft's favor since professionals are relying on it even less.

[0] https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2019/#technology-_...

WSL is interesting and fun, but too uncanny valley for Linux development. I stick with VirtualBox.

I stick with VMM. I won't touch oracle with my friend's 10 foot pole.

And if I have to run Windows, its from a Qubes DispVM, with whitelisted network configuration.

occasionally I'll reinstall Windows for something and use it as a daily driver for a while out of laziness

I am certainly open to the idea of being surprised by this -- there very well could be more developers using Microsoft as the operating system they use for their development machine, however I do wonder if the population of Stack Overflow users is a good, un-skewed sample of all developers.

I don't think too many people would be using Windows if it were really bad for Linux based development. I sure as heck wouldn't be.

In an ideal world I would be running native Linux but I had trouble with some audio gear not working and my favorite video editing tool doesn't run in Linux, nor do some of the games I play -- so I use Windows because that's what's available.

As much as I hate to say it, Windows is a pretty good environment to do every day developer things + more.

For example I spent 95% of my time in WSL using tmux and terminal Vim to write code full time (with fzf and everything you would expect on the command line). It's really fast. The wsltty terminal has almost as low input latency as xterm on native Linux (which I run on my modified Chromebook). While developing all sorts of web apps (Flask, Phoenix, Rails, Webpack, etc.) inside of Docker the volume performance is fast enough where I never once had complaints even on 5 year old hardware.

Then I'm a hotkey away from opening any program with command line launchers, switching virtual desktops with other hotkeys, running VMs for testing server deployments, recording and editing videos and playing any games I want without having to think twice about it or dual boot.

Other than bullshit telemetry and forced updates, Windows 10 Pro is not that bad from an all around "I use my computer to do stuff" perspective. I think that's ultimately why Windows is so popular. It also helps that you can put together a beast of a machine for about $750. But with that said I would instantly switch to Linux if all of my Linux problems were suddenly fixed.

In the mean time, if anyone is interested, I have a bunch of blog posts and videos showing how I set everything up in Windows. It can all be found here: https://nickjanetakis.com/blog/the-tools-i-use

As much as I hate to say it, Windows is a pretty good environment to do every day developer things + more.

I keep thinking about the eventual replacement for my MacBook Pro. Every time I hear something like this, every time I see MS's open source contributions, etc. I keep thinking about Windows as a replacement.

At the top of the list of reasons why that's unlikely to happen is shit like these dark patterns to enforce invasive telemetry. I don't care how good WSL is, I don't want to be spied on or coerced into allowing spyware to run.

The rest of the list is mostly: I don't believe/agree with you. I've used chocolataey (ugh), and I don't want to do all of my development in a VM. I recently set up a Win 7 VM to get a small C# library built. Turns out it was easier to build it on my Mac and copy it over.

Other than bullshit telemetry and forced updates

Let me stop you right there. I'm not going to consider anything with forced spyware and forced updates. Until those are fixed I don't care about the rest.

> The rest of the list is mostly: I don't believe/agree with you.

All of what I mentioned is documented on my site and in a lot of cases I've recorded and published unedited videos of my WSL (v1) / Docker based dev environment.

You are free to believe what you want, but I'm not lying. If it were not as good as a claimed I wouldn't be using it for full time development / video creation.

> I've used chocolataey (ugh)

use scoop instead.

Chocolatey had so much promise, but it just doesn't deliver. At least in my experience, software tends to be outdated, and the packaging often of dubious quality. There are also multiple packages available for a lot of software, so you don't know which one to choose. Oh, and the Chocolatey website is pretty awful too.

I do like scoop, but of course the selection available is much smaller than Chocolatey, at least for now.

Come to think of it, it's kind of strange that Microsoft never created a packaging system for Windows (aside from the Store; I mean for non-UWP apps).

Check out the VS Code SSH remote, if your internet is good enough or if you have a spare computer lying around, you can develop as if it's 'on the desktop' but you get none of the friction and all of the bare metal speed, I switched from terminal VIM a few years ago and the intellisense makes it worth it. There is a VSVim plugin that is... pretty good if you haven't gone too far down the VIM rabbit hole (my usage was and still is pretty basic).

WSL is one workaround after another

I am! I reckon it's a neat OS. They've improved it dramatically (except for that... Candy Crush auto install, that is annoying).

I have used WSL a lot, and now I use VS Code Remote to develop on a Debian 10 VPS. It's glorious.

Being able to build a custom computer that I can do work on, and that I can play games on, and that run the Adobe suite of software, and not pay through the nose for high specs is wonderful.

After 10 year of using Apple and OS X, I felt patronised having to pay double the price for performance. The nail for me was when OS updated were forced through their Apple Store.

Windows 10 updates are far more seamless.

The nail for me was when OS updated were forced through their Apple Store.

They have moved away from that now, updates are managed through preferences again.

It's too late for me my friend!

Windows remains the most convenient OS for video games, and given HN's userbase (mostly young men), I think a lot of people here use Windows.

Windows is also the OS that doesn't require relatively expensive hardware(MacOS barring hackintosh) and doesn't require that much fiddling(Linux).

It's basically the good enough option that most people would use.

It also lets you build bloody good ones. The 3950X will be a ripper when it's out, couple that with a PCIE4 nvme, 3600 MHz DDR4 and you'll have screaming performance for a relatively modest budget that'd cost you a mortgage and a firstborn under Apple - if at all possible.

It will also work with Linux though.

Absolutely. I see a few people running Linux on their desktop, but the majority are on OSX.

The Linux / Windows world offers more performance for significantly less money, if you're prepared to learn about hardware.

I find it so much fun, although sometimes frustrating when things like bios bugs interfere with normal voltage levels - need to be more hands on these days than before.

Windows is also the arguably the domain of GPU related dev. I see lots of Razer laptops. They are small and same weight as a MBP but you can get a 2080 RTX (previously 1060 GTX). Even the newest MBA's GPU is not 1/2 as fast as the 3 year old Razer (and its peers)

That's right. We use Surface Book with NVIDIA for our laptops and Thinkmate / Supermicro PCs. All with NVIDIA. Our Hollywood clients need NVIDIA for video rendering and we write software in CUDA/C++.

Windows 10 really does work great. Seriously!

Are people really using these for work instead of just spinning up a cloud instance or using a desktop? I've always thought they were a horrible deal for gaming, and it seems like they'd still be a horrible deal for ML work or whatever.

Windows remains the most convenient OS for video games

Steam's Proton is amazingly good. I recently switched from an iMac to a PC, and was expecting to use Windows for games and Linux for development, but Proton has run everything I've tried with excellent performance and stability.

Go install Linux on a laptop with Nvidia Optimus hardware and you'll see how "amazingly good" Linux gaming is on many devices. No, Linux won't come close for at least the next 10 years. It's much better now with Proton, yes, but still not nearly enough. Even on my machine with the more compatible hardware at least 50% of games crash with Proton before you even see a window.

Wine works pretty well and compatibility is increasingly all the time. Proton integrating wine with Steam is quite convenient. Sure, not everything works.. but then I'm not going to buy every console and handheld just so I can play their exclusives either.

Everyone has their own values but...

I have more games than I can reasonably play in months installed and available to me already, with more coming out all the time.. there's no one game that would make me compromise everything just for recreation.

I do but I don’t pay for it. I have a copy on boot camp and its been a while since the “Activate Windows” watermark stopped bothering me. It boots directly into Steam Big Picture. I know I know... but at least I’m not using malware infested solutions to keep it working.

Then explain all those "Windows with WSL is the only Linux desktop I'll ever use" posts.

Not made by most people, and (anecdotally) often made by people for which the alternative to a "Linux desktop" is a Mac, not Windows.

Quick poll: https://linkto.run/p/NGWCZJO1

And your poll is showing most people here run Windows.

Currently the poll is 56%. It's barely a majority. My original commenting, say "many" don't use Windows, seems quite reasonable. Granted, this poll shouldn't be considered authoritative.

The rest is split between two other operating systems.

It's OK to admit you're wrong, you know.

I for one am finding W10 with WSL, Docker and the new Console fantastic.

Can't wait for WSL2 in 2020 with half second Docker starts++.

I run Windows 10. I'm running it now. It works well, and I don't want to cut my nose off to spite my face by worrying about Satya Nadella seeing my internet searches. I'm not that important that I have to worry about these things.

I tend to run it on the "Happy Path" only make a few changes to keep some notifications from bothering me. And I don't buy machines from vendors that try to "add value" by putting crapware or shovelware on the machine. (I buy Supermicro-based boxes from Thinkmate, and use Surface Book notebooks.)

I write software all day long in Erlang, F#, and CUDA/C++ and have to write software that works with popular film and audio production software (which runs on Windows platforms)

Your internet searches are not part of the telemetry - it's nowhere near that invasive [0] (I still believe you should have the option of disabling it though).

[0] https://docs.microsoft.com/en-gb/windows/privacy/configure-w...

> I don't want to cut my nose off to spite my face

I have trouble understanding this perspective since it's hard to see what critical functionality Windows provides, that you can't get with Mac OS or Linux. If they wouldn't be materially different experiences, the metaphor doesn't hold water.

> it's hard to see what critical functionality Windows provides, that you can't get with Mac OS or Linux

With MacOS, your choice of hardware is very limited, and you have to pay way over the odds for it. You also can't run a lot of games on it.

With Linux, the desktop experience is, IMO, not as good as on Windows, and neither is driver support. Things have improved a lot here, but the UX is just not as polished as Windows. I do love Linux though - for servers, I wouldn't use anything else.

I really like Windows 10 Pro/Enterprise (apart from dick moves like this, of course). I can build incredibly powerful desktop or laptop machines, in terms of RAM, CPU and GPU - and everything is more or less guaranteed to "just work", and be stable too. You get excellent multi-monitor and high-DPI support, good accessability features, Hyper-V for running VMs, Sandbox coming soon, WSL for a Linux-like experience - and WSL2 will soon make it even better. And of course your gaming options are much better too.

I can't run NVidia on Macs (Ok, some Mac true believer will tell me I can get an PCI-X external cage and run it over thunderbolt with crazy drivers) and I can't run Adobe Premiere, After Effects, Audition, etc, on a Linux machine.

It's one reason I gave up having a MacBook Pro, the hardware is underwhelming in so many ways.

But my Mac Pro from 2010 still gets nvidia driver updates and cuda support. In the unlikely event someone will pay for a new Mac Pro for me I'll be able to stick a 2080 in it.

You can stick an nvidia card in a PCI-e chassis and it will work on a laptop or Mac mini, but yes it isn't optimal.

"isn't optimal" is an understatement. It's downright wonky!

I've had good experiences with Magma PCIe expanders, for linux and macis, though they are firmly in the enterprise space. https://www.onestopsystems.com/pcie-expansion

Ah, the joys of finding quirks in PCIe enumeration when you have PCIe switches and expansion bridges.

I use vscode on Windows with the remote ssh plugin. It's amazing, and I'd never go back. I can kick of compilations of large projects on an 80-core server instead of my laptop. When I need to, wsl works great for small compilations.

Pretty sure you couldn’t be more wrong.

If only the Linux on the desktop dreams of a decade ago - along with those Linux-installed PCs they tried to push at Walmart - had a more optimistic outcome...

It might have, if Linux evangelists had pulled their heads out of their asses and actually made what people wanted instead of assuming everyone was too dumb too use a computer and only needed a pretty web kiosk and email. If they had made the OS function in a sane way instead of the Rube Goldberg machine of cobbled together systems that it is. To this day I still hear people blame Linux Desktop's complete and utter failure on pre-installs and lack of prettiness, ignoring completely the complaints of all the ways Linux Desktop just plain sucks, even when they were made by Linus himself.

Reminds me of Firefox evangelists.

And their cousins, the Rust evangelists.

I’ve always been confused about this too. A couple of big open source contributions and the world turns a blind eye to massive privacy invasions

Since I’ve migrated to web IDEs, my daily driver has become a Chromebook.

Privacy concerns apart, it gets the job done and the battery life is over 14 hours. I’ve migrated from Linux, which is also pretty good as a desktop, but feels a little less polished than ChromeOS.

Which web IDEs?

I've come to love coder.com (port of VSCode), I created a container on proxmox with a base install so I can create environments for any project. C9SDK is also a very solid choice it just isnt as stable as coder.com, lacks many features, and doesnt have the VSCode hype.

For now, AWS Cloud9. It’s pretty good for Python and JavaScript. Go support is subpar, but usable. Besides that, you have access to terminals, so you can use Vim and Emacs in text mode as well.

However, I’m evaluating using that new IDE from Eclipse (I think it’s called Dirigible), because it seems to have more mature Go support.

Microsoft has been able to strategically link their brand with platforms people use and trust -- like github -- allowing them to seem more progressive and open. Ultimately getting everyone to drop their guard.

The fallacy is "post hoc, ergo propter hoc", in attributing these changes to Natella and not to changes in the industry.

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