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Comment by nip180 | Hacker News Reader

> Why is Windows a nightmare? I use Windows 10 on a PC I built and it's fine.

I paid $200 for a Windows 10 pro license because I needed to run a Windows application in a virtual machine. I was very unsatisfied with my purchase. I would describe Windows as “a nightmare”. Here are my top three complaints about Windows.

* There are advertisements built into the operating system.

* The operating system often restarts itself, without the users permission. It will restart itself even if a user launched application is running.

* There is still no central repository for useful applications. Managing and keeping all software updated takes a lot of manual work.

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> It will restart itself even if a user launched application is running.

This was a huge problem, for me. Some multiaxis CNC toolpaths require days to generate. I missed a critical deadline as a result of Windows 10 deciding to update itself, which finally prompted me to install ShutUp10 from O&O.

I use the maximum shit-disabling mode in ShutUp10. It works. Once or twice a year, I run Windows Update and get updates, then I run ShutUp10 again and disable all the trash Microsoft re-enables.

https://www.oo-software.com/en/shutup10

Just say your network connection is metered, and that windows should not auto-install updates from metered connections.

Yes, there exist workarounds - but the point is that you should not have to "trick" your OS into not shooting you in the foot.

Not entirely sure, if feel for most people the best setting is to do the autoupdates. To be honest perhaps even myself sometimes.

Holy hell, the fact this is even a thing boggles my mind. I get that MS want's vital (to them) updates. But oof... your use case is exactly the one that will cause a shit load of pain.

There's a free tool called Windows Update MiniTool that works very well for disabling auto-updates and then allowing you to update manually every so often. That is what we install on our CNC machinery that have a Windows 10 backend.

https://www.majorgeeks.com/files/details/windows_update_mini...

> free tool

I'd rather describe this as a mail-in-rebate for the costs of running Windows 10.

We sort of implicitly know there is this need to make the Windows lifestyle more sane, and can rely on tools like these existing.

But the time it takes to research this, track down the best binary for the job (examining the source code is not always easy), makes me conclude that there's a real hidden cost to being a Windows user.

It's not so hidden. It honestly astounds me that users are willing to put up with this bullshit.

The most impressive thing about Microsoft as a company is the way it single-handedly lowered user expectations to the point where ads, security issues, and critical time-wasting failures are somehow considered an acceptable price of entry, and not evidence of an unacceptably shoddy, incompetent, and user-hostile product culture.

Well, I came here to comment, but you already succinctly summed up my thoughts. Thanks for that!

People who run Windows aren’t the users - they’re the product, either with Microsoft selling their eyes with advertisements, harvesting their usage data through telemetry for a profit, using their numbers to push paid development software, or using their ubiquity to be the basis for computer literacy materials for public schools paid for by taxpayer.

I think the user vs. product dichotomy is not right in this case. Microsoft really does make its money on products and support. You can see this on their public filings.

The relevant dichotomy is more like: people who run Windows aren't the buyers. One-off personal licenses for home PCs are more than a rounding error but are certainly not what made Microsoft what it is.

Governments and F500 companies buy Windows and Office for X00,000 machines for X0 years of support at a time. Enterprise procurement teams are the actual buyers whose opinions matter to product managers.

> harvesting their usage data through telemetry for a profit

Does MS sell their telemetry data?

Please dont disable auto-updates. Instead configure your Windows machine to schedule them. Look your notifications. Treat it as a Car, not as a Toy.

I used to say the same, but my perception - and I know it's not reality, but every day with it feels like this:

* I log in.

* I start setting things up so I can start work.

* I'm notified about critical updates. There will be a forced reboot soon...

* I'm watching out in case something pops up while I'm typing and whatever key I was about to press causes the 'reboot' question to be answered - and I wait several minutes and lose flow entirely.

* I log in.

* I start setting things up again as they were so I can start work again.

* There are more critical updates...

Turning off auto-update is not an option, because there are so many security holes and I don't want to end up a victim. I also don't like having to fight to try and keep the OS from doing something it will push against, so trying to creep around letting it do updates when I'm not busy and reboots when I want it to but not asking me - waiting to be told - it's hard work and stressful.

Windows is an amazing piece of tech and gets better all the time, but I find myself much more able to stay in the 'flow' and avoid stress in MacOS or Linux.

To be fair, I get notifications of "important updates" on my Fedora Workstation more often than I get on Windows. (Or at least I think I do; I don't use Windows that often.) Fedora also wants to reboot for nearly every bunch of updated packages that doesn't consist entirely of top-level applications, which seems to mean at least 95% of the times it wants to update.

I think I get it why it wants to reboot: not only is it probably somewhat safer in terms of not screwing anything up in running session, but you can't be sure some running application or service isn't still using an outdated version of a library until you've restarted it. (Not to mention that the Linux kernel updates every week or so nowadays, but those are definitely not the only ones that trigger an update [edit: by which I of course mean "trigger a reboot"].)

I tend to not use the graphical software updater and just ignore its notifications instead, and just update from the command line and reboot when it suits me. That does allow me to not have my workflow interrupted but it doesn't change the fact that I still do get notified of updates that require some kind of action pretty often.

On the other hand, checking for those updates doesn't burn minutes on end of CPU time every time the OS is booted, as it seems to do on Windows 10.

I don't use Windows, but from the comments it seems that Windows just forcibly reboots after some time. I'm sure your Fedora workstation will ask you to reboot, but not just do it without you triggering the action.

AFAIK in Windows there's generally a prompt for rebooting either now or after a delay that can be selected from given options. (I'm not a heavy Windows user either so I might not be right.) I've sometimes found Windows to have rebooted by itself, but that might have been because I wasn't there to react to the prompt.

But no, obviously Fedora doesn't force a reboot, nor does it give a prompt you can accidentally reboot through.

However, a part of the complaints (which I fully understand) seemed to be about the frequency of the updates, and in the name of honesty I just wanted to point out that's not really just a Windows issue.

If I'm on a road trip when my car comes due for service, it doesn't automatically exit the interstate and drive to the first available mechanic.

I wish Windows would let me treat it like a car.

Letting windows update is treating it like a toy.

Remember that time Microsoft let FTDI brick a bunch of knockoffs through the first party update mechanism? Remember when they locked up a bunch of embedded devices with Windows 7 support nags? Remember when they dropped Candy Crush in your start menu, when they decided local accounts now had to be cloud linked, and when they enabled Cortana by default and made it increasingly difficult to opt-out? When they decided to take 30 minutes of your morning without asking (hope you weren't planning on using the computer for anything important)?

When it comes to high-reliability embedded OSes, Microsoft is a case study in inept paternalism. Updates regularly cause problems. Between updates and malware spreading behind a NAT, I'm not at all convinced updates are the lesser of two evils. Ideally, these applications wouldn't run windows, but since they often do, IMO the best approach is to isolate them to the greatest degree possible which includes blocking auto-update (note: not turning it off, blocking it, along with everything else you can get away with).

Local accounts don't have to be cloud-linked! Microsoft just employs dark patterns to make it hard to find how to opt out, and prompts you to "finish setting up your PC" by creating a Microsoft account, after every reboot.

I've also rebooted to find out about Microsoft Edge, the new browser that's now pinned to my taskbar, even after removing Edge several times.

MS finished making Windows into a stable, usable OS and then promptly began turning it into adware.

> Local accounts don't have to be cloud-linked!

I just installed a new Windows 10 VM last week and there was no option to use a local account anymore. None. No dark pattern menu link somewhere hidden in a corner of the screen with low contrast, only the choice between logging in or creating a new Microsoft account. Which took me longer than the whole rest of the installation, because as it turns out generic addresses like "fk_u_ms@outlook.com" are already taken and Microsoft seems very anal about certain choice words.

But at the same time they don't seem to mind if I enter a date from 2018 as my birthdate and the calendar dialog includes decades of future dates, but at least they got the forced online account working...

I installed Windows a few weeks ago and found the option to "set up later," but the ISO is several months old and the computer wasn't connected to network at install time.

The option will appear if the machine is not connected to the Internet.

offline accounts are only available if you are not connected to the internet, or at least you a get a visible create offline user button/link. last month i did a fresh install with the latest iso and i had to unplug my ethernet cable

Can't get any darker than that!

Sorry, but are we talking about Desktop operating system? Because if that's the topic, Linux and BSD have much to learn from Microsoft. Including stability. I can tell you, because it's my job: if you don't want to use outdated software, you should go with rolling distributions, that became stable around 2016. Before that every update was a schrödingers update. Windows are able to rollback updates since Windows 2003.

> Between updates and malware spreading behind a NAT, I'm not at all convinced updates are the lesser of two evils.

You can get your answer looking back to events like Nimda and Code Red.

I would have agreed with you before Windows 10 came out. Afterwards I had to regularly reinstall Windows on most of my machines as well as laptops of close family members because whether it was a boot loop, BSOD every 10 minutes, random switching of keyboard layouts or just performance issues to a point the mouse lagged, there was a whole wave of new bugs suddenly appearing after some forced update.

Now I run a rolling distro since 2018. Development got a whole lot simpler, everything is more enjoyable and to date there's been exactly one noteworthy issue which was resolved after a quick search and 10 minutes.

And since then I've never seen a "new update available" popup dialog, no ads, no Cortana, no "smart" features, and most definitely no need to install third-party software to actually have a usable file search. I even update much more frequently than Windows 10 every forced me to, because for some reason I just never have any issues and I can just do it in the background.

Or join your machine to a domain. No ads, managed updates.

I have said it before, but around half of the machines in my estate are macs, and I have many more reported update problems from them. I think a lot of it is caused by inconsistent updates.

How many people are running their own AD setups? I don't think this is very useful advice.

To be fair, Samba4 setups are super easy, so for the HN crowd it probably isn't terrible advice.

I've been running one at home since the first TP in 2006, and I don't spend any time thinking about or maintaining them (running on Debian)

I would have thought at least some of the people at hn work for companies?

So - like a new car, service about once a year then, after the first year?

I wish that was the case.

Why not use Windows Server instead?

Check the price tag.

You can run Server without product activation. I do it in a VM and think Server is well behaved.

nip180 wrote above:

> I paid $200 for a Windows 10 pro license because I needed to run a Windows application in a virtual machine.

I think if someone is willing to cheat on the licensing cost 4hey might just as well go with a pirated XP?

I agree, this was sort of a annoying. Though when you reason about it in a systems way, not having a default of "reboot" would be problematic from a security PoV.

Of course, you're not the only one with this issue. There used to be an option in "gpedit" to disable this, but I can't find it anymore. I suspect that this is because there is now an option in the "advanced options" of the "Windows update" menu, called "restart this device as soon as possible".

when you reason about it in a systems way, not having a default of "reboot" would be problematic from a security PoV.

It's very SV-bubble to assume that Microsoft's security needs are more important than him getting his work done.

As he stated, he missed a critical deadline. What if the client cancelled the contract because of that, causing him to go out of business? How does trying to sympathize with Microsoft feed his family?

No, the tech bubble is not more important than things that happen in the real world. Windows has security problems? Sure, all operating systems do. But Microsoft shouldn't shift its problems onto the users. That's just bad business, and bad ethics.

It's a bit more complicated than that I think. A common function of malware is to create "zombie" computers that are controllable en-mass to, say, DDoS a website. This makes the prevalence of malware-ridden Windows machines a _common_ concern, rather than specific to Microsoft.

Exactly this is what I was getting at. 98% of Windows users don't care if their machine reboots, provided they don't lose work. This is precisely the 98% percent that are likely to get infected, and will cause havoc for all of us (not just themselves). Spam, DDoS, etc.

Similar to how getting a vacination is not only good for you, but also for the rest of society.

Mind you, I'm saying this from a perspective of someone who uses his machine to perform nightly jobs (learning models, ontology alignment, etc) So it's not like I haven't shared your pain =)

A common function of malware is to create "zombie" computers that are controllable en-mass to, say, DDoS a website.

Thanks for the explanation, but I'm well aware of malware. I wrote my own boot sector viruses back in 8-bit days.

But the point still stands: Microsoft's practices stop him from doing his work, and could cost him his livelihood because it assumes that fixing its failures are more important than his work. What's the point of even having the computer if it can't be relied upon to do complex tasks?

Nice! Apologies if I sounded condescending, you clearly are much more familiar than me :).

I tend to agree, but I have difficulty when you scale the problem. No individual person benefits from having their computer rebooted enough to counteract the issues, but might everyone collectively? The utilitarian calculus becomes difficult.

Though parallel solutions: better security testing or a capacity for live updates without a reboot, may be an answer.

I don't know that it's a bubble thing. I've never been even near SV (although I am a tech worker, so perhaps in some kind of a bubble), and I can see how there could be rational reasons for implementing automatic reboots. Some people might put of rebooting indefinitely, for instance, and not all of those would be doing it because they know what they're doing. If you're MS, you have to take into account a lot more than just users who know what they're doing.

I don't like the automatic reboots, and I'd agree it's not a good solution and I probably wouldn't have implemented it if I were making the decision, but I don't really see how finding reasons for why MS might reasonably want to do it is a SV bubble thing.

I've never been even near SV

The bubble isn't a geography, it's a mindset.

All the bubble leaders are 'retiring' to Texas and Florida.

Again, all addressable through Windows Update -> Advanced and some very simple once monthly manual update schedule on your work calendar. It is what I do, and it is really not hard at all. This is all discoverable on the web through a generic "control windows update" search. No special tools needed.

Once a month I update my work PC and three home PCs, all on the same day. Easy to remember, saves surprise updates and reboots.

Windows update does give warning and allows you to re-schedule updates to a different day and time. You can also push back on when you start getting certain kinds of updates.

It may not be a perfect situation but I don't find it to be quite as dreadful as many make it out to be. FreeBSD is my other OS and I'll be honest, I dread doing those updates much more.

If you're like me, you've been conditioned to click the ok button on windows to get dialog boxes to go away. Never really reading what/when something is going to happen.

Windows 10 hasn't always warned you about an update. Once I lost a half days work while visiting family. I had been doing some genealogy work, when some small kids come over, so I put my laptop asleep (shut the lid) and went about my day, not thinking to save. The next day, opened my laptop and was greeted with the "Hi! We are setting things up for you" screen. Was very upset to have to redo the previous days work.

I think (although I'm not 100% sure) that if you don't react to the prompt at all, it automatically reboots after a while, at least on some updates.

You may not always be at the computer if you're waiting for some kind of a long-term process to finish.

There's also the the Ameliorated Windows tools that strips a lot of nonsense out of the default Windows install.

[1] https://ameliorated.info/

There also the option (I think it's Wifi only) where you can mark the connection as "metered connection" and it turns off a whole bunch of automated nonsense.

Same as you, I periodically turn off the metered connection toggle and then run updates. It saves me a heap of angst.

Next time, order "KW4-00190" from any Microsoft reseller who will sell you it. You might need to add 4 addt. dummy licenses to your cart (Identity Manager is popular). This gets you access to the volume licensing portal so you can get MAK activation for LTSC editions of Windows 10.

No store, no advertisements, no telemetry, Edge optional, all Enterprise features enabled, security updates only (defer fully configurable), out of the box.

I use it at home and with my family members.

Dumb question, but why not just tell windows you're on a metered connection? It won't auto update then right?

> There is still no central repository for useful applications. Managing and keeping all software updated takes a lot of manual work.

And this is why I tend to ignore most commentary on Operating Systems. You know the moment that Windows releases a centralized repository, there will be a thousand cries of "walled garden!" and "embrace, extend, and extinguish". It's literally impossible to satisfy everyone, given how many mutually exclusive needs exist out there.

Not if it were a repository a la Linux, distributions, where:

- You can still install applications manually, and there are no special permissions lost for doing so.

- You can access it using your choice of application, instead of only the MS-approved tool

- You can add 3rd party repositories

If that's what the "Windows store" was, I'd absolutely use it (if I still used Windows). If it comes along with a bunch of other crap, then yeah, there will be pitchforks.

There is a Windows store. It kind of failed, mostly because using it requires using gimped APIs. If they got rid of that more people would use it.

What does seem to work is the certificate and code reputation. It does actually prevent users from running things but is easy enough to click through if you really know better.

> mostly because using it requires using gimped APIs

Yes, that's the "other crap" I was referring to [edit: specifically "special permissions lost for doing so". I was a little vague because I knew there were some additional restrictions for using the Windows store but wasn't sure what they were.]

You can deploy Win32 application on the store as well, and Project Reunion is about merging both worlds.

https://chocolatey.org/ ?

Didn't know this existed. I'll definitely consider it if I ever go back to using Windows.

I didn't spend enough time to verify if it satisfies the "can use other clients" and "can add 3rd party repositories" criteria. But assuming it does, I bet tons of people would happily use it, if Microsoft blessed it as the official standard for managing Windows applications / installed it by default.

I didn't use windows for a few years but last time I tried everything I needed was in the main repo - it feels similar to brew but less popular among windows users.

The official package manager of windows is winget.

https://github.com/microsoft/winget-cli

I like scoop though personally.

https://scoop.sh

In combination with the ChocolateyGet provider for Powershell this works pretty well actually. It's not apt-get or similar, but it does get rid of the point-click installation for quite a lot of common software.

I think that that is because Microsoft would probably only create a Walled Garden. What's the chance they will allow a system where anyone can host their own repository, and add/remove them as a user? EEE doesn't seem applicable here, because there's nothing to embrace and extend. It's problem that has to be solved for scratch.

They already did, it's called the windows store (and the UWP platform)

"Centralized" does not imply "only". Debian or CentOS do have centralized repos, but that does not prevent others having repos too (i.e. proxmox for Debian or EPEL for CentOS).

Not true. There is one central repository for Windows that manages all the useful applications that I use on Windows. That central repository is called Steam and no one really complains about it.

> "walled garden!"

This is only true when the centralized store is the only way of installing software. That's why iOS is called a walled garden, but not Android.

I've been having to use Windows a lot more lately (after barely touching it for 15 years) and the word "nightmare" is an apt description.

I think, though, I've come to realize why: backwards compatibility. I've seen videos where people have installed Windows 3.1 and then upgraded the OS from there and pretty much everything continues to work. I think in one video I saw, Quake or Doom stopped working after one upgrade (probably Vista) and then started working again after a patch release or something.

I have to hand it to Microsoft that they honor backwards compatibility as well as they do. However, at some point, you have to just make a clean break. You have to acknowledge that what you have is bad and broken and should no longer exist in this world. Microsoft finally did just that with Internet Explorer and then (to a lesser degree) with replacing Edge's rendering engine.

For Apple, backwards compatibility isn't a sacred cow. They're more than willing to throw something out that is old and/or doesn't work as well as it should. They handle breaking that fairly well, all things considered. They give plenty of notice (sometimes not as much as they probably should have -- https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/01/apple-prepares-macos...) so average and power users alike have the time to transition. Sure, it's never as smooth as we would like but what transition ever is? Still, Apple users don't have to deal with things like Windows users do.

Microsoft needs to start making a clean cut with Windows, probably starting with the Explorer shell. It's old. It's obnoxious. It actively gets in the way and makes me less productive. They can do this if they just put their shoulders into it a little. (Christ almighty why does the scroll bar have to jump back to where it was if my mouse veers away from while scrolling? "Because that's how we've always done it!" is easily the worst answer to any question ever asked)

Also, for the love of all that is holy they need to reverse the decision to have ads built into the OS. How can they not see how bad an ad-centric model is becoming for Google and Facebook? Having a whole OS where the user is the product? That's a privacy nightmare that makes Google and Facebook look like little league.

If they are going for a clean slate Windows, might as well build it on top of linux like MacOS

I don't know much about the NT kernel. Is it really as bad as the shell such that they should throw it away? I kinda don't want to see that happen for the same reason I lamented them switching Edge's rendering engine the same one Chrome uses. I feel like not everybody should build on top of Linux/Unix. It's good that there are other options.

It’s not, the problem is all the legacy compat stuff they are forced to support forever now. NT and Windows without legacy would be an amazing operating system but also nobody would use it.

Not at all. NT is a fantastic kernel. In many ways the core system of Windows is much better than Linux. Largely because you just don't have the pointless fights about systemd vs. not, or X vs. Wayland, or foo vs. bar - you have a cohesively designed, unified base platform instead. Lots of very fantastic edge-case scenarios that are so trivial & seamless, and with functional GUIs & tooling so you can discover on your own more easily. Run out of disk space? Pop in another drive and just say "extend" and your existing partition is instantly expanded across both drives - no reconfiguration, no broken fstabs, no "well since you didn't anticipate this originally you now just can't do that", etc... Hell, Window's can handle a GPU driver crashing so quickly & seamlessly that you wouldn't even realize it happened if it didn't give you a little notification saying "hey something might be wrong with your GPU since it just crashed, take a look maybe?" It won't even kick you out of a game when it happens. Similarly you typically don't need to reboot to update drivers. Heck, converting from a "bare metal" install to a hypervisor is a matter of checking a box & rebooting.

But Microsoft then throws a bunch of stupid crap on top of it like Candy Crush ads for a piece of software that costs $200 and kinda ruins it. Or with all the deep hooks for Windows Defender & friends that just cripple process launching & file creation performance.

> Heck, converting from a "bare metal" install to a hypervisor is a matter of checking a box & rebooting.

Can't the same be said with Linux too? Major distros has Linux with KVM kernel module built-in. I never had to do anything rocket science to run KVM, for example.

I mean the existing install is converted to a VM in the hypervisor, too. I'm unaware of a way in Linux to convert your install to being a VM under KVM.

MacOS is based on BSD 4.4 and certified as a UNIX 03.

Linux is a different and somewhat distant version of UNIX.

They already have a great WSL going already. I run Ubuntu 18.04 under Windows 10 all day long.

I use it to model and test code that will take hours to fold into a build for our embedded target. On the last feature I completed, I wrote 2500 lines of pthread / Unix domain socket server code, and it ran on my WSL/Ubuntu target with only lightweight text file based shims to replace drivers on the embedded target. When I slid it over into the embedded build flow, it ran on the first try, no changes.

Compiled as a unit test harness in about 3 seconds on my WSL instance. Our full embedded target takes 30 minutes to build. So the WSL/Ubuntu instance is a huge time saver.

Advertising? Part of my job is managing about 60 Windows pro Desktops/Laptops. I have yet see any advertising on them.

-On Windows Home however, it comes with Candy Rush and a bunch of nonsense that show up in the Start menu tiles. I just uninstalled them and call it a day.

-Yeah this is my biggest issue.

-Indeed but I have not even thought about it.

My experience with this (circa 1 year ago when I last had a PC running Windows Home) is that they periodically come back as the OS updates.

On your last point, I have been using Chocolatey[0] for several years now and it does a pretty good job for stuff that isn't on the Windows Store or Steam.

[0] https://chocolatey.org/

While I just turned to ubuntu again, because this days I fell more productive in linux, all this complains can be easily mended.

You can turn off advertisement during installation, and set up privacy measures like don't give up hardware id for advertising.

I had no problem with windows restarting itself during work hours. After you install all drivers, it would only restart during night time while I was sleeping.

About central repository, is true. You have windows stores, but is very incomplete. The best tool I found to help me was chocolatey, and it saved me a few hours. https://chocolatey.org/

> You can turn off advertisment during instalation

On something you paid $200 for? WHAT? What is this world coming to?

Of course. You should've paid [contact us for a quote] dollars to get the LTSC version.

It is unnecessarily annoying to get the LTSC or other Enterprise versions of Windows but it's not out of reach for an individual.

Use https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/solution-providers/ and pick one of the companies in your area. It largely doesn't matter.

Shoot them an email explaining what you want and they'll have you meet the 5 license minimum for volume licensing by buying a Windows Pro License a Windows Enterprise Upgrade license, and 3 user cals which are cheap. They'll put your name down as the business and then you're done.

You can also get it with MSDN if you have that!

Why would you want a long term support contract for Linux? How is that comparable? Do you contact Microsoft for support often? And if so, how many of those things could you resolve yourself on Linux in 10 minutes via StackOverflow?

LTSC is the long-term support enterprise version of Windows. Last I checked, it's stripped down without the Windows Store/Cortana/Candy Crush nonsense that a typical install includes.

I interpreted the OP as suggesting that the proper analog for a $200 (plus ads) Windows Pro license was a Linux long term support contract, suggesting that $200 (plus ads) for Windows Pro is a bargain compared to a Linux support contract (e.g., from redhat or similar). In this case, I'm not sure why a Linux support contract is an appropriate comparison operand.

If the OP indeed meant "Windows LTSC", then I'm not following along with their point.

I was making fun of how difficult they make it to legally get a decent version of Windows.

To be honest I got my license for free, but yes... its actually a fucked up thing

I was unsuccessful turning off advertisements personally. I also find wsl2 onerous, as I have run into a bunch of strange edge conditions trying to use the same directory with linux programs and windows programs.

WSL2 is great if you treat like a linux system i.e. don't do goofy things like check out code on NTFS and work on it from Linux.

I really like WSL2, and the vscode integration between 10 and WSL is simply astounding.

I gave up and went back to linux, I had crazy issues with simple things- like not being able to _rename files_ if the wsl for linux git had cloned the file (but it would work if windows git had cloned it). Death by hundreds of little cuts like this for me. Visual studio code worked just as well if not better on a mac or linux.

There is also steam, for a certain subset of programs.

> You can turn off advertisement during installation,

What? Where? How do you tell it not to advertise the new Edge or Candy Crush in the Start Menu during installation?

> and set up privacy measures like don't give up hardware id for advertising.

some privacy measures. For others, you still need to manually turn them off via gpedit or using a 3rd-party-tool like OO Shutup.

It's possible, but you're not supposed to notice.

So, how? Where?

You have to decline quick setup, and then go flip a bunch of toggles.

Source: Have installed win10 more times than is healthy.

Don't forget to scroll down on that toggle flipping screen -- when you start toggling the top ones, their description text gets longer and (on my screen anyway) pushes some of the toggles below the visible viewport.

Good point. I forgot to mention that, usually I just tab my way through them.

I never use quick setup, I flip every single available ad and privacy toggle and yet Candy Crush comes as an uninstalled game in the start menu anyway. I have installed Windows 10 a lot of times as well.

Hmm. Usually I'm installing Pro at work actually now that I think about it. I think Pro has most of those disabled by default.

ShutUp10 is probably your best bet, or something like this: https://gist.github.com/alirobe/7f3b34ad89a159e6daa1

Edit: If you don't mind a little up front prep time, you could probably create install media for windows that would run one of the above programs immediately after finishing the install. If you have to do it multiple times quickly that may save some time.

The fact that these are required at all is ridiculous, and (part of) why I run Linux/BSD these days.

On initial setup aren't asked all these thing?

No you aren't. And if you need to install MS Office stand by for constant Teams advertisements. I never did figure out how to turn those off.

here's the thing about disabling/turning off settings in Windows 10 (at least from my experience).

- half of the things are for stuff you shouldn't have to opt out of in the first place in any reasonable OS

- that's if you can even opt out of them

- the settings/ways to do so are often obscure/ obscured

- come next update, your settings are never safe, and you can't have faith they didn't add more bullshit that you have to research and find ways of turning off

>You can turn off advertisement during installation, and set up privacy measures like don't give up hardware id for advertising.

You can't. It asks you if you want to not share data, but warns you that this will result in less personal ads.

So you can opt for non-personalized ads, but you can't turn off ads altogether during the install.

I've taken to installing Windows Server on personal desktop machines just because Pro is so bad.

Server does require initial tweaks to run smoothly on a desktop machine. Some security and telemetry policies need relaxed, audio service doesn't run by default, Internet Explorer Enhanced Security Configuration needs disabled so you can grab an installer for your preferred browser, and other minor things like disabling Ctrl+Alt+Del on the login screen.

The result, though, is that you get an OS that acts like regular old Windows 10, with _zero_ ads and (I think?) less telemetry. I have not seen anything Pro can do that Server cannot, even gaming (Steam, AMD graphics drivers) works fine. As a bonus, you're not subject to any of the restrictions that Pro has for advanced workloads like virtualization. Server Manager along with all the extra utilities not found on Pro are also nice to have.

Updates are still downloaded/installed automatically, but servers can't reboot whenever they feel like it, so I'm not ever interrupted by unwanted reboots like on Pro.

How did I find it so easy to set up Windows 10 Home edition to only "tell" me about updates, and no forced reboots. I didn't use any add-ons.

Just set 'active hours', turn off everything under 'Advanced', and if you really want to not do any updates for a while, you can select a date a date 35 days in the future to restart updates.

Three very simple things built into the update tool.

If you are on a corporate machine, they may limit what you can block based on their internal rules, but that is an IT problem, not Microsoft.

Windows 10 never updates or reboots during my active hours. I always defer updates to a long time out, then manually update at a point where I want to. Problem solved.

I have an expectation that i shouldn’t have to interact with my computer every 35 days to prevent it from restarting.

In my experience Windows will warn you when it plans to schedule restart for update. This is where I always reschedule update so it would be far away before it finally updates. Windows also warns you one hour before scheduled restart and you could reschedule again at that time.

A one hour warning is pointless in the middle of the night when you have your computer running a job that will take a few days to complete.

I use chocolatey[1] and winget[2] will be officially support when it’s finished. Microsoft is a step ahead of Apple here, who still refuse to officially support a package manager, much as I love macOS.

[1] https://chocolatey.org

[2] https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/package-manager/win...

> There is still no central repository for useful applications. Managing and keeping all software updated takes a lot of manual work.

https://github.com/microsoft/winget-cli

https://scoop.sh

https://chocolatey.org/

1. Can't argue there, although once I "uninstall" the advertised apps, I've never had them return

2. There's an option to disable automatic restart for updates

3. There's the winget package manager, but it's still in preview. There's also chocolatey and scoop, which are community run, but that's similar to homebrew on macOS.

> 2. There's an option to disable automatic restart for updates

Where? I've been able to defer reboot, but not disable it completely. ShutUp10 seems to (mostly) work, but automatic updates/reboots somehow get re-enabled sometimes.

Group Policy.

Group policy does not stop it from eventually rebooting. Though it will stop the "rebooting right after applying an update" horror show.

With Group Policy: if you are logged in, Windows will pop a modal dialog in your face and you can preempt it there, but just leaving an application running and being AFK will not prevent reboot if Windows has decided it has waited long enough. The amount of time I can ignore the "restart" request in Windows Updates varies from days to weeks for me.

I hate the behavior with a passion, but I can see why Microsoft wants to force reboots eventually. Having un-updated Windows is not good for 90% of the people out there.

Honestly speaking, Windows 10 is as far from the spirit of the "I'm a PC" and "Windows 7 was my idea" ad campaigns as you can get. Now it's just "You will bend over and take what we give you, for the greater good"

If you want full control of your OS, you need to switch to a BSD or Linux, with appropriate expectations about the applications you will or won't find there.

Edit: fix grammar/punctuation a bit

That is not true. There is a group policy to disable updates. I know, because I have to run updates by hand on my work computer, otherwise I stay months behind on security patches.

Stop spreading lies. It does work. (I also have hot had ads in Windows on all Windows machines I own. But this is a Microsoft product, which always raises these long list of myths.)

First, I said rebooting, not disabling updates.

Instead of name-calling, maybe post the group policy here that allows you to never reboot after updating.

Updates requiring reboot are not applied unless you reboot... so don't apply updates requiring reboot? It's useless to install them if you refuse to reboot. You can't have it both ways.

So the solution, as I said, is to not install these updates. (Or reboot, but you say you don't want reboots.)

Yes, beside paying $200 for a Windows license, you have to spend many hours removing all the annoyances you mentioned. I boot into Windows sometimes for certain apps and I'm still struggling with these annoyances after several years of using Windows. This effectively increases the cost of Windows far beyond the license cost.

There are advertisements built in because no consumer buys Windows. Rather the OEM does through their bulk license or it gets pirated. Enterprises can pay to remove ads.

>I paid $200 for a Windows 10 pro license because I needed to run a Windows application in a virtual machine

https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/downloads/virt...

That's an 'evaluation virtual machine'.

Yes and? Do you need to change your taskbar in your virtual dev machine? You still get Sec-Updates

If I understand correctly, the evaluation licence is very restrictive. You essentially aren't allowed to use it for any purpose other than, well, evaluation.

Look that's the title of this site:

>Get a Windows 10 development environment

>Start building Windows applications quickly by using a virtual machine >with the latest versions of Windows, the developer tools, SDKs, and >samples ready to go

So i say thank you very much Microsoft.

You aren't allowed to use the evaluation licence for production work. The licence document is clear on this:

> You may use the software in the virtual hard disk image only to demonstrate and internally evaluate it. You may not use the software for commercial purposes. You may not use the software in a live operating environment.

I think the heading Get a Windows 10 development environment is referring to downloading the image, rather than to licensing. I agree it's not very clear.

I don't read a license document when the advertisement is so clear.

“This VM will expire on 1/10/21.”

I take a snapshot immediately then load from that when it expires. Or there is some arcane, verbose powershell incantation that has also worked for me.

This works for my web testing purposes, but probably isn't practical for a CNC machine.

>but probably isn't practical for a CNC machine.

Since the CNC maschine/controler should no be connected to the internet anyway it's not important...and even then, you still get sec-updates.

It still require specific license to use the virtualization (Hyper-V). So far as I am aware, Windows 10 Home license cannot run hyper-v. It needs Pro, Education, or Enterprise license to use the feature (mobile license don't have this feature). Likely nix23 upgraded to Win10 Pro from Win10 Home for this reason.

You can run WSL on any version of Windows (including Home Edition). Docker can also use WSL2 as its backend, so I rarely need to run VMs on my Windows dev machines anymore.

QEMU and Docker under WSL just seems like it should not work, but it does, and it works well.

>It still require specific license to use the virtualization (Hyper-V)

Sounds like you have problems with reading or clicking links, it's a: Windows 10 Enterprise

>Likely nix23 upgraded to Win10 Pro from Win10 Home for this reason.

WHAT? I run freebsd and develop/maintain sometimes Windows "Apps" with the virtual machine.

Then you’re doing something wrong with Windows because in the years I’ve been using it I have never been interrupted by an update I couldn’t postpone.

How long was the postponement message up? I have left windows machines doing background processes for weeks to find them interrupted by a restart. Sometimes those interruptions have resulted in data loss.

I’ve also had forced restarts while a directX application was in full screen and I didn’t see the windows pop up.

Windows is only good as a gaming machine.

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